WANDERING ALBATROSS. 91 



subject of tlie present notice and D. chlorortjnclios , the Yellow-nosed 

 Albatross of Latham, ("Synopsis," v, p. o09.) 



The Wandering Albatross, of which but few naturalists have much 

 personal knowledge, inhabits the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Its 

 appearance in European seas is rare and accidental; at least but few 

 instances of its having been seen there are recorded. Degland 

 notices one specimen having been captured at Dieppe about 1830, the 

 head of which is preserved by M. Hardy, the well-known naturalist 

 of that place. Another specimen was killed near Anvers in 1833, 

 and three more in the neighbourhood of Chaumont, in November, 

 1758. There is also a specimen in the museum at Christiana, which 

 Mr. Tristram informs me he has seen, which was killed off the coast 

 of Norway. Notwithstanding these instances, however, ornithologists 

 have been tardy in admitting this species into the European lists. 

 Nuttall, whose descriptions are always interesting, proceeding, as 

 they did, from an accomplished naturalist, who, like Audubon, earned 

 his reputation in the forests and the prairies, has given an excellent 

 account of this bird. "Vagabond," he remarks, "except in the short 

 season of reproduction, they are seen to launch out into the Avidest 

 part of the ocean, and it is probable that, according to the season, 

 they pass from one extremity of the globe to another. 



"Like the Fulmar, the constant attendant upon the whale, the 

 Albatross, no less adventurous and wandering, pursues the tracks of 

 his finny prey from one hemisphere into another. Dr. Forster saw 

 them in the middle of the Southern Ocean, six or seven hundred 

 leagues from land. When the flying fish fail they have recourse to 

 the inexhaustible supply of molluscous animals with which the milder 

 seas abound. They are nowhere more abundant than off the Cape of 

 Good Hope, where they have been seen in April and May, sometimes 

 soaring in the air with the gentle motion of the Kite at a stupendous 

 height, at others nearer the water, watching the motions of the flying 

 fish, which they seize as they spring out of the water to shun the 

 jaws of the larger fish which pursue them. Vast flocks are also seen 

 around Kamtschatka and the adjacent islands, particulaidy the Kuriles 

 and Bering's Island, about the end of June. Their arrival is con- 

 sidered by the natives of these places as a sure presage of the presence 

 of the shoals of fish which they have thus followed into these remotest 

 seas. That want of food impels them to undertake these great migrations, 

 appears from the lean condition in which they arrive from the south; 

 they soon, however, become exceedingly fat. Their voracity and 

 gluttony is almost unparalleled; it is not uncommon to see one swallow 

 a salmon of four or five pounds weight; but as the gullet cannot 



