410 LARIDM. 



not is uncertain ;" — the same author, in his ' History of the 

 county of Cork' (1749), remarks, "it is not certain wliether they 

 breed with us, although they are frequent on our coasts." Eutty, 

 in his 'Natural History of the county of Dublin' (1773), merely 

 states that " it has been frequently seen on these coasts." 



What I know of this petrel of late years, beginning with the 

 north, is, that specimens shot in April and May 1839, at Port- 

 rush, near the Giant's Causeway, are in the Ordnance Museum, 

 and that in the month of October, that year, an individual was 

 found dead, inland, near Belfast. In October 1849, a communi- 

 cation from the Eev. G. M. Black, of Annalong, at the sea-base 

 of the mountains of Mourne, informed me, that " Manx petrels 

 appear on this coast from the middle of July till October, and are 

 very much on the wing. Their flight is easy and graceful, rising- 

 ten or twenty yards above the water, and then again skimming its 

 surface. It is very different from the straight and laboured 

 flight of the guillemot, razorbiU, or puffin. I have never remarked 

 more than eight or ten of them together, and seldom so many, 

 but altogether they are in considerable numbers. They are vul- 

 garly called " mackerel cocks " (a name applied to others of the 

 puffin tribe),"^ as arriving on the coast shortly before the annual 

 shoal of that fish, and are looked on by fishermen as its precursors. 

 Theh appearance is consequently welcomed by them." Further 

 questioning my correspondent on this subject, he replied that 

 there is no doubt whatever as to the species, as he had frequent 

 opportunities of observing the birds on wing within fifteen or 

 twenty yards, when mackerel-fishing in a small pleasure-boat during 

 summer ; he very seldom saw them swimming. As they never 

 come ashore, they could be observed only at sea. Their plumage 

 and mode of flight, he adds, are quite distinct from those of any 

 of the AlcidcB, their wings are much longer, and their " beat " 

 slower. The first bird seen by Mr. Black in the season of 1850 

 was on the 8th of July, but men who had been mackerel-fishing 

 in the channel — far out at sea — stated that they had observed 



* Mr. Austiu stales that the Sterna hirimdo is called mackerel gull oq the coast 

 of Waterford and Wexford (' Ann. Nat. Hist.' vol. ix. p. 435). 



