468 APPENDIX. 



had been daily brought to dine with the family, and had partaken of 

 their fare. It ate potatoes and flesh-meat, or potatoes and butter, 

 taking twice the quantity of the latter that it did of the vegetable. The 

 report I had of this bird in December 1850 was, that the sight of 

 one eye is gone, and a cataract spreading over the other, and that it 

 has a cough, accompanied by the ejection of phlegm. With such un- 

 pleasant symptoms of old age, it is to be feared that we cannot reckon 

 on its life being; much longer extended.* 



Notice of migratory Birds which alighted on, or tcere seen from, H.M.S. 



Beacon, Captain Graves, on the passage from Malta to the Morea, at 



the end of April 1841. [I published this paper in the eighth volume 



of the ' Annals of Natural History ' (1842).] 



" Having been favoured by my friend Captain Graves, R.N., with 

 an invitation to accompany him during the projected government 

 survey of the island of Candia, I, with Mr. E. Forbes (who had 

 received from the Admiralty the honorary appointment of Naturalist 

 oil the occasion), left Malta in PI. M.S. Beacon, on the 21st of April. 

 The first port we sailed for was Navarino, for the purpose of watering 

 the ship. The passage occupied seven days. It being just the period 

 of the year when many species of birds which make Europe their 

 abode only in the more genial seasons, after having passed the winter 

 in Africa, were crossing the Mediterranean to their summer quarters, 

 we were often gratified by a sight of them, either passing, resting 

 briefly on the rigging, or remaining sometimes so long as a day or more 

 about the ship. 



"The following notes were made upon the subject. The prevailing 

 wind of the day is set down : the progress noted is what we had made 

 at sunset. 



" ^^;r?"Z 32. — Wind W., forty miles E. of Malta. An owl alighted 

 on the vessel and remained a short time. I saw it very well and near, 

 luit could not be certain of its species. Looking over the collection 



* In ilie Belfasi Neivs-letler, OcloLur 28tli, 1812, iheve is mention of a green 

 parrot shot at Byrt, which proved, from a gold ring on its neck, to have helonged 

 to Captain Paekenham, of the Saldaulia ship of wai', lost with all her crew olf 

 Lough SwiUy. The loss of the ship was on the 4th of December of the preceding 

 year; so the bird had probably existed at large, on its own resonrccs, for ten months, 

 including a winter. 



