THE BIRDS OF ST KILDA 245 



obtained at St Kilda by Bullock, who described it in 

 the sale catalogue of his collection as an undescribed 

 Petrel with a forked tail, taken at St Kilda in 1818. 

 At Bullock's sale, in 181 9, the specimen was purchased 

 by Dr Leach for the British Museum; and in 1820 it 

 became the type specimen of Procellaria leachii of 

 Temminck. Atkinson (p. 224) observed it at St 

 Kilda in 1831, and all subsequent visitors interested 

 in birds have something to say about this species, 

 as the St Kilda archipelago is the main nesting- 

 haunt of this Petrel in the British Isles ; indeed 

 it was long thought to be the only one. It is said 

 to breed in all the islands of the group. When 

 Elwes visited St Kilda in 1868 the natives did not 

 discriminate between this species and the Storm 

 Petrel — the rage for collecting birds' eggs had not 

 then set in. 



PuFFiNUS GRAVIS, Great Shearwater. — The late Mr 

 Henry Evans {Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., 1898, p. 238) 

 records the capture of a Great Shearwater two miles off 

 Dun on 8th August 1897, where, he tells us, "the bird 

 had been obtained before." A party of natives who 

 were fishing observed the bird near their boat and threw 

 some ling's entrails to it, and while eating them it was 

 knocked down with an oar. Two others were killed off 

 the island during the last week of July 1899 {oi. cit., 

 1899, P- 239). Waterston found one dead in the water 

 on 5th July 1905, and another on the 8th. 



Many were at sea between Hirta and Boreray on 

 8 th October 1910. When close to Boreray on that date, I 

 saw considerable numbers of these birds engaged in their 

 fine dashing flight around the island, as many as fifty 

 being seen on the wing in company. It was also abund- 



II. Q2 



