424 LARID^. 



" Mr. Glenuon^ bird- preserver, Dublin, states that a specimen 

 sent to him for preservation, was procured on the 7th in one of 

 the streets of the town of Cavan, and that on the same day another 

 was found at Brown Hall, county Carlow. Mr. C. Carleton UEs- 

 trange informed me, that when woodcock-shooting in the planta- 

 tions at Colonel Eniry's demesne some miles from the town of 

 Cavan, about a week after the 7th of Januar}', he found two 

 petrels which had evidently been dead for a few days, or from 

 about the time of the hurricane : they were too much injured by 

 exposure to the weather to be preserved. Mr. E, Ball was sent 

 a Thai, pelagica from Kells, county of Meath, where it was pro- 

 cured on the 7 th — on which day a petrel, picked up near Mullin- 

 ger, county of Westmeath, was sent to a gentleman of my ac- 

 quaintance in Dublin ; and on tliis day also I have been informed 

 that one was found dead near the town of Wicklow. Of all these 

 specimens I have seen but the two noticed as T. pelaglca ; of two 

 or three others I could not obtain information sufficiently satis- 

 factory to enable me to judge whether they were of this or the 

 fork-tailed species {T/ml. LeacJdi) ; but the remainder were de- 

 scribed in such a manner as to leave no doubt on my mind as to 

 their being the T. pelagica. Of the petrels that I had before 

 seen, and which were obtained at various times and places through- 

 out Ireland, about as many were of the T. LeacJdi as of the other, 

 considered the more common species. 



" There have been different conjectures as to the cause of the 

 petrels' appearance on land, but in this instance, when more 

 of them were found scattered over the country than on any 

 previous occasion, immediately after the greatest hurricane that 

 has, within the memory of the oldest persons, swept over Ireland, 

 we are compelled to attribute their presence to its agency alone. 

 Prom several of tliese birds having been found in the extreme 

 east, as well as the more central portion of Ireland, it would 

 seem, from the fact of the hurricane ranging from the north- 

 west to the south-west, that some of them had been blown 

 from the Atlantic, almost entirely across the island, a circum- 

 stance which, strange as it may appear, is less singular than 



