50 STORMY PETREL. 



examine their form and plumage with nearly as much accuracy as if 

 they were in the hand. They fly with the wings forming an almost 

 straight horizontal line with the body, the legs extended behind, and the 

 feet partly seen stretching beyond the tail. Their common note of 

 '^weet, weet," is scarcely louder than that of a young Duck of a week 

 old, and much resembling it. During the whole of a dark, wet and 

 boisterous, night which I spent on deck, they flew about the after-rig- 

 ging, making a singular hoarse chattering, which in sound resembled the 

 syllables patret tu cuh cuh tu tu, laying the accent strongly on the 

 second syllable tret. Now and then I conjectured that they alighted on 

 the rigging, making then a lower curring noise. 



Notwithstanding the superstitious fears of the seamen, who dreaded 

 the vengeance of the survivors, I shot fourteen of these birds one calm 

 day, in lat. 33°, eighty or ninety miles ofi" the coast of Carolina, and 

 had the boat lowered to pick them up. These I examined with con- 

 siderable attention, and found the most perfect specimens as follow : 



Length six inches and three-quarters ; extent thirteen inches and a, 

 half; bill black, nostrils united in a tubular projection, the upper man- 

 dible grooved thence, and overhanging the lower like that of a bird of 

 prey ; head, back and lower parts, brown sooty black ; greater wing- 

 coverts pale brown, minutely tipped with white ; sides of the vent, and 

 whole tail-coverts, pure white ; wings and tail deep black, the latter 

 nearly even at the tip, or very slightly forked ; in some specimens, two 

 or three of the exterior tail feathers were white for an inch or so at the 

 root ; legs and naked part of the thighs black ; feet webbed, with the 

 slight rudiments of a hind toe ; the membrane of the foot is marked 

 with a spot of straw yellow, and finely serrated along the edges ; eyes 

 black. Male and female difiering nothing in color. 



On opening these I found the first stomach large, containing numer- 

 ous round semitransparent substances, of an amber color, which I at 

 first suspected to be the spawn of some fish ; but on a more close and 

 careful inspection, they proved to be a vegetable substance, evidently 

 the seeds of some marine plant, and about as large as mustard seed. 

 The stomach of one contained a fish, half digested, so large that I should 

 have supposed it too bulky for the bird to swallow ; another was filled 

 with the tallow which I had thrown overboard ; and all had quantities 

 of the seeds already mentioned, both in their stomachs and gizzards ; 

 in the latter were also numerous minute pieces of barnacle shells. On 

 a comparison of the seeds above mentioned with those of the gulf-weed, 

 so common and abundant in this part of the ocean, they were found to 

 be the same. Thus it appears, that these seeds floating perhaps a little 

 below the surface, and the barnacles with which ships' bottoms usually 

 abound, being both occasionally thrown up to the surface by the action 

 of the vessel through the water, in blowing weather, entice these birds 



