220 PROCELLARim^. 



On the other hand, the drawings of fish are carefully executed ; so also 

 are some of other birds, a sketch of a Tropic-bird being highly finished. 



With the exception of one or two allusions to these drawings by Latham, 

 no ornithologist seems to have examined them until Kuhl endeavoured to 

 identify some of them when elaborating his celebrated article on Procellariidse, 

 pubhshed in his ' Beitrage zur Zoologie und vergleichenden Anatomic " in 

 1820. Prince Bonaparte, in his ' Conspectus Avium,' assigns a place to most 

 of the names on these drawings and in Solander's MS. ; and Gray, in his 

 ' Hand-list,' includes many of Solander's names, but omits (as he often did) 

 to state that they were only names, unaccompanied by any published 

 description by which they could be identified. 



Solander's MS. notes, wiiich I have been enabled to examine in the 

 British Museum through Dr. Giinther's kindness, extend over a variety of 

 subjects, but include comparatively few on birds. The original notes on the 

 Albatrosses we succeeded in finding ; but with those on the Petrels w^e were 

 not so fortunate. This loss is in a great measure remedied by notes in an 

 interleaved copy of the twelfth edition of Linnseus's ' Systema Naturae ' 

 formerly in Solander's possession, and evidently compiled by him from 

 his own manuscripts. These notes consist of concise Latin diagnoses, to 

 which generic and specific names are attached, of no less than thirty-two 

 species of Petrels and Albatrosses. When a drawing of Parkinson's exists, 

 the fact is mentioned; so that by the help of these notes the task of 

 interpreting the crude unfinished sketches is rendered easier and more 

 certain. 



I now take the drawings as they are numbered, and add such notes as I 

 think will either place the names attached to them in their proper position, or 

 else assign them to the limbo of unrecognizable titles with which this family 

 of birds is so heavily encumbered. 



