130 



I have already mentioned* the tame Albatros which lived so long at Government House, 

 in Wellington, under Mr. Gillington's assiduous care. Brought there as a down -covered 

 nestling, having the freedom of a small enclosure, and being fed almost exclusively on fish, it 

 had developed in four months into a fine bird in perfect first-year's plumage. But there is 

 a still more remarkable instance of the kind. It could hardly be expected that this bird would 

 live long when removed from its natural environment ; but Mr. Martin Chapman, of Wellington, 

 succeeded in keeping a pair of young ones alive in his garden for many months. They had 

 become perfectly tame when I saw them and would feed readily on raw or cooked meat. They 

 were brought from Antipodes Island and were of different ages. The younger one was a large- 

 sized fledgling; body covered with thick woolly down of a pale grey colour, standing out 

 prominently on the head where the colour is somewhat lighter; feathers on back, wings and 

 breast, black ; bill, white ; feet, pale grey. The other was in the first year's plumage— dark grey, 

 with white face and throat. The survivor of these partook freely of fat beef, and had an 

 inordinate appetite. It was usually docile, but, on being provoked, would snap audibly with its 

 mandibles. 



Captain Fairchild informed me that when visiting the Brothers and Stephen's Island in the 

 month of June, in perfectly calm weather, he saw at least six hundred Albatroses resting on the 

 water, and that from the anchorage oil the latter island he counted as many as a hundred. He 

 said he had noticed that during a period of five years, from 1889, they had been getting more 

 and more plentiful off the New Zealand coast. Prior to that he never saw more than a straggler 

 now and then, and generally at Flat Point, about midway between Wellington and Napier. 



A specimen received in the flesh from Captain Fairchild, who took it himself off the nest 

 with a nestling beside it, is a parti-coloured bird, in what I take to be the intermediate or transi- 

 tional plumage, perhaps that of the second or third year, or even later. Upper surface blackish- 

 brown, darker on the wings and tail ; band across the forehead, immediately above the bill, with 

 the whole of the face and throat pure white ; neck and fore-part of breast sooty-brown, paler on 

 the anterior edge, broken and freckled on the lower margins ; lower part of breast and abdomen 

 pure-white, largely freckled on the sides of the body with brown ; flanks, vent, and under tail- 

 coverts sooty-brown ; wing-feathers black with white shafts ; lining of wings pure -white, varied 

 with black on the outer edge ; tail-feathers black, the shafts white at the base. This bird had no 

 white markings on the upper surface of the wings. 



The following cutting is from the ' Sydney Morning Herald ' : — 



With reference to a paragraph which appeared in a recent issue respecting the rescue of a seaman who 

 fell overboard from the ship ' Gladstone ' while on her voyage from London to this port, we have been 

 supplied with the following interesting additional particulars by Captain Jackson himself : On October 24th, 

 at noon, whilst the ship was in latitude 42° and longitude 90° E., and going at the rate of about ten knots an 

 hour, the cry of ' A man overboard ' was raised. Captain Jackson and his chief officer, Mr. John Rugg, who 

 was seated at dinner at the time, immediately rushed out of the cabin and rounded the ship to. A boat, 

 manned by four hands, was then lowered, and left the ship in charge of Mr. Rugg five minutes after the alarm 

 was raised. The man was then out of sight, but the rescuing party pulled towards the spot where it was 

 supposed he had fallen, and after some little time found him clinging to an Albatros, which he was using as a 

 lifebuoy. As soon as the boat got within a few yards of him he let the bird go and swam to the boat, being 

 apparently none the worse for his unexpected immersion. He returned on board smiling, and stated that just 

 after he fell an Albatros swooped down upon him and made a peck at him, but he seized it by the neck and 

 kept its head under water until he had drowned it, and then used it to preserve his own life in the manner 

 already described. The boat was away about one hour. The sea was very rough at the time, and the wind was 

 from the north-west. The most remarkable thing about this extraordinary story is that the man, who could 

 only swim a little, had heavy sea-boots on at the time of the accident, besides being encumbered with oil- 



* Trans. N. Z. Inst., vol. xxvii., p. 121. 



