94 EDWARD A. WILSON. 
as “ great piles of small angular stones . . . . about two feet in diameter.” The first 
eggs were here laid, very rarely more than one in a nest, on November 4th, and the 
average length of eighty eggs was 10°38 cm., and the breadth 6°57 cm. There is 
also in this account an interesting note which I quote below, upon the proportion of 
the white, dark, and intermediate phases. Plate XI, Fig. 2, in the ‘Ibis’ for 
January, 1906, shows an exceedingly happy photograph of the white phase of this 
bird with its nest and egg. 
Ossifraga feeds mainly upon carrion, though its character is not above suspicion 
in the matter of attacking living animals. In one case, at any rate, the evidence 
of its having attacked man in the water is hardly open to doubt; I quote Mr. Howard 
Saunders, who writes: “ Mr. Arthur G. Guillemard states that a sailor who was picked up 
had his arms badly lacerated in defending his head from the attacks of an ‘albatross,’ which 
may well have been this Giant Petrel.” Mr. Eagle Clarke also, in his ‘‘ Account of the 
Birds of Gough Island” (‘Ibis,’ April, 1905, p. 263), tells us that according to Mr. Comer, 
it carries off young Penguins to eat, and pulls Petrels from their burrows in the ground. 
We constantly saw it feeding upon seals’ blubber, dead penguins, and any other 
animal refuse that happened to lie in its way, but we ourselves never saw any living 
animal attacked; and although Mr. Eagle Clarke mentions “abundant remains of 
recently killed young penguins” in their rookeries in the South Orkneys, he says 
nothing in this case to prevent one from believing that the birds merely picked up the 
remains of what the Skuas had killed, or of birds that had succumbed to climatic causes. 
The habit that this bird has, in common with most of the petrels, of disgorging 
semi-digested food when disturbed or annoyed is very commonly seen in putting it to 
flight after feeding. It is interesting to notice how small an amount of such ballast 
removed by vomiting seems to turn the scale, for it is quite insignificant when 
compared with what the stomach actually contains; yet the bird seems so utterly 
unable to run or to rise from the ice until relieved, that, no matter how closely it is 
pressed, it will come to a dead stop in order to disencumber itself by a number of 
voluntary efforts before making a serious effort to rise. The weight of the bird and 
the length of its wings necessitate a considerable run on the icefloe in any case before 
this can be effected. On one occasion the footmarks (fig. 48, p. 94) of a rising Ossifraga, 
seen on a drifting ice-floe from the ship, created quite a small sensation ; from a 
distance they looked much like the footprints of some gigantic mammal. 
The relative distribution of the various phases of this bird is a point to which a 
good deal of attention was paid throughout the course of our voyage. By making 
a rough estimate daily of the number of birds that we saw of this species, and notes as 
to their colouring, we came to the conclusion that the white form, although seen from 
time to time in the more temperate region of the Southern Oceans, is really very much 
more abundant, both absolutely and relatively, in the ice. And not only this, but that 
the abundance of the intermediate forms has also some relation to locality and climatic 
differences. 
