PROCELLARIIDA. 733 
WILSON’S PETREL. 
OceanfTes ocEANIcUS (Kuhl). 
This remarkably long-legged Petrel was noticed and figured as 
Procellaria pelagica by Wilson (Am. Orn. vii. p. 90, pl. Ix. fig. 6), 
under the impression that it was identical with the Storm-Petrel ; 
but the earliest scientific description of it was given by Kuhl in 1820. 
In 1824 Bonaparte published a memoir on this and three more 
species, with the distinctive characters, measurements, and figures of 
each ; and, in ignorance of Kuhl’s name, proposed to call the bird 
Procellaria wilsoni, in honour of the distinguished ornithologist, 
whose name can, however, only be handed down to posterity in the 
trivial appellation. In his memoir Bonaparte says, “I have never 
learnt that it has been seen on the coasts of Europe. I killed one, 
that had probably strayed, near the Azores”; and this appears to be 
the first printed notice of the occurrence of Wilson’s Petrel near the 
European side of the Atlantic. As regards the British Islands, 
Gould observed this species in abundance off the Land’s End in 
May 1838, and in November of the same year the specimen now 
figured was found dead near Polperro in Cornwall; an example 
has been picked up near Chippenham in Wiltshire ; two have been 
obtained near Freshwater in the Isle of Wight (the last in the 
autumn of 1888) ; the late Mr. F. Bond recorded one from Sussex; 
one was shot near Halifax in Yorkshire in November 1874 ; and three 
