THE STORM PETREL. 419 



like the puffins ; from which circumstance/* the writer adds, " I 

 have been able to get numbers of them alive : they scarcely ever 

 approach the mainland."* A gentleman going out in a boat, 

 three miles from Dunfanaghy, on the 2nd of August, 1850, saw 

 some of these birds on wing above the sea. Mr. G. C. Hyndman, 

 who spent from the 6th to the 8th of August, 1845, on Tory Is- 

 land, supplied me with the following information. Thalassidroma 

 pelagica breeds in numbers witliin the rabbit- burrows of the cliffs 

 on the northern side of the island, out of which boys drew them 

 with their hands. When so far in that this could not con- 

 veniently be done, the entrance was broken away until the bird 

 became witliin reach : a single nest was in each burrow. A 

 number of eggs (about a dozen) were procured, and about half-a- 

 dozen young birds, all in the down, but of different ages. Fully 

 twenty old birds were taken, and many more could have been. 

 About the half of those caught were given their liberty, and on 

 being let off from the top of the clifF, perhaps 300 feet high, they 

 shot in a straight line down towards the water. My friend did 

 not see the nests, as the little boys wished to keep him in ignor- 

 ance of them, lest he should get for himself what he gave them 

 money for. He observed them putting their ears to the holes, 

 to ascertain whether birds were within ; only one egg or one 

 young bird was taken in any nest, but it could not be ascertained 

 whether more than one old bird was ever within the aperture. 

 One of the old captives, when in his hand, warbled some sweet 

 notes, which resembled those of '' the swallow twittering," but of a 

 stronger tone. Several ejected food from the stomach, apparently 

 the remains of fish : no oil was expelled by any of them from 

 their nostrils. From the circumstance of these birds being gene- 

 rally seen at night, which is their natural preying-time, the people 

 here imagine that they would be killed by the gulls if they ven- 

 tured out by day, and hence, that they remain concealed. 



A reward was offered for a fork-tailed petrel (P. Leachii), and 

 one was soon produced, " made to order " on the instant, by the 

 middle tail-feathers being extracted, and the outer one at each 



* Mr. J. V. Stewart, in Loudon's 'Mag. Nat. Hist.' vol. v. p. 584. 



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