408 THE BIEDS OF DEVON. 



Mr. Gatcombe had one sent him from Seaton in 1874. Another was 

 taken alive in Plymouth Sound in November 1852 (J. G., ' Naturalist,' 1853, 

 p. 84) ; and a pair in an exhausted state were taken alive by two trawl boys 

 December 11th, 1852 (J. B., op. cit. p. 204); one of these was figured in Dresser's 

 ' Birds of Europe.' In 1867 an adult female was captured in an exhausted condition 

 on a trawler ; three were taken November 6th, 1874 ; and an adult bird was killed ofi 

 Plymouth at the end of July 1876 (J. G., Zool. 1868, p. 1295 ; 1874, p. 4262 ; 1876, 

 p. 5127). There is a specimen from Plymouth in the A. M. M., and another was in 

 Mr. Cecil Smith's collection. 



\_Ohservations. — Writing of the Dusky Shearwater (Pufflntts ohsciirus) in 

 Dorsetshire, Mr. Mansel-Pleydell calls it " A rare spring visitant, I have 

 only heard of one having been procured in this county. This, as I am 

 informed by Mr. E. Hart, was caught alive in Poole Harbour, June 8th, 

 1877." But, subsequently, in the ' Zoologist ' for 1888, p. 143, this 

 statement is corrected, the bird proving to be a Sooty Shearwater (Pvffinns 

 f/riseus). There appear to have been two undoubted specimens of the 

 Dusky Shearwater obtained in the United Kingdom — one in Valentia Har- 

 bour, May 11th, 1853, which was exhibited at a Meeting of the Linnean 

 Society, June 7th, 1853, and the other near Bungay in Suffolk about lOtb 

 April, 1858, which was exhibited by Mr, Osbert Salvin at a Meeting of 

 the Zoological Society, May 16th, 1882. (Yarrells 'British Birds,' ed. 4, 

 vol. iv. pp. 28, 30.) This species nests on the Desertas, some small islatids 

 near Madeira, and belongs to the Southern Oceans. It is something like 

 a small Manx Shearwater, but the upper parts are much blacker, the bill 

 more slender, and it is without the dark band behind the thighs which 

 occurs in the Manx Shearwater.] 



Fulmar. Fulmarus glacialh (Linn.). 



[MoUymew or MoUymauk.] 



A casual visitor, of rare occurrence, during the winter months. 



An inhabitant of northern seas, this bird very seldom wanders to the 

 south. In the breeding-season it resorts in incredible numbers to 

 St. Kilda, and confers immense benefits on the inhabitants of that sterile 

 island. They derive their supply of oil for their winter lamps from it; its 

 eggs and young afford highly relished food, and countless numbers of the 

 birds are salted down for winter consumption, while its feathers give them 

 bedding, «&:c., — what the Reindeer is to the Lapps, the Fulmar Petrel is to 

 these poor people. It lays a single white egg of considerable size, and 

 from a large basketful fresh from St. Kilda we ouce picked out one which 

 was red all over. We know of only a single instance of the occurrence 

 of the Fulmar in N^orth Devon, one in the bluish-grey plumage of the 

 first year which was shot February 2nd, 1859, as it was tiying over the fish 

 market at Barnstaple. We examined this bird in the flesh, and found 

 upon its neck a large osseous tumour, bare of feathers, and weighing nearly 

 three oiinces ; it was round, and about the size of a Mandarin orange, 

 and appeared to us to have been caused by some injury, possibly from 

 a shot-wound, to the ct-rvical vertebrae, from which it was probably 



