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of rocks lying off the Chatham Islands. According to Mr. Bethune, who is a careful observer, 

 Diomedea melanophrys has yellow irides. There is a colony of them on the Campbell Islands, 

 but in such an inaccessible place that they could never get to it from the ' Hinemoa.' 



Professor Newton, writing to me on August 17th, 1891, says : " The most startling event 

 I have to tell you of is the killing, some few months ago, of an Albatros in one of the Faroes 

 which — like that which was obtained more than a dozen years ago, off Spitzbergen — is declared to 

 be D. melanophrys; but I have a strong belief that both examples, if properly examined, would 

 prove to belong to some North Pacific species. A curious thing about this last bird is that they 

 declare that it has been frequenting the place for some twenty years or more, coming and going 

 every season with the Gannets, with which it more or less consorts." 



This bird unfortunately was shot, at last, on Myggenas Holm (' Ibis,' 1896, p. 136), and is 

 now in the Copenhagen Museum. Mr. Harvie Brown has given an account of another killed in 

 lat. 80° N. (' Zoologist,' 1894, p. 337.) 



Mr. Sanford writes (' Zoologist,' 1889, p. 387) : " A living specimen of Diomedea melanophrys, 

 which I kept for some time and brought home, and gave to the Zoological Society, would eat 

 nothing but fish not salted, but he survived a fast of about six days of the voyage, when no 

 fresh fish was procurable. . . . The furthest north I have ever seen any Albatros is about 

 5° or 6° north of the Cape of Good Hope. D. melanophrys reached this latitude in the autumn 

 of 1885, and the Sooty Albatros a degree or two further south, and I have seen at a distance, 

 during the winter, D. exulans in Table Bay ; but I believe they occur further north." 



It is astonishing how destitute of bird life the great expanse of ocean is north of the Equator. 

 The following extracts from my diary for 1894, during a long sea voyage, illustrates this truth :— 



1st February. — On reaching our anchorage at Santa Cruz, with the peak of Teneriffe, more than 15,000 

 feet in height, full in view, we were visited by Lams marinus; and till about noon on the following day we 

 were attended on our voyage by the Grey-backed Gull in some numbers. For the rest of the day there was 

 not a sign of life on the dreary waste of waters. 



3rd February. — About 10 o'clock this morning I saw a large Petrel, dark-grey on the upper, and white on 

 the under surface, which followed in our wake for an hour or more with a very hawk-like flight. After this, 

 not a wing of any sort nor other sign of animal life till night, when the sea was ablaze with phosphoric 

 displays — sparks and flashes of light — given out, no doubt, by Medusae and other small invertebrate inhabi- 

 tants of the deep ; but, in addition to this, the whole of the disturbed water seemed luminous, the effect beinc 

 probably due to the decomposition of animal matter on the surface of the ocean. There had been a breeze 

 from the E.N.E. all day, it was misty in the afternoon, and there was nothing in the way of a sunset. The 

 night was dark, and these phosphorescent effects were very beautiful. Jupiter was resplendent in the heavens, 

 and Sirius shone with his accustomed pale effulgence ; but the sparkling lights on the surface of the water, as 

 our steamer ploughed her way through it, seemed more brilliant even than those of the firmament above : 

 everywhere points of light that flashed like sparks from a giant dynamo and expired in a tiny illumination, and 

 occasional balls of lambent flame which dashed past the ship and then dissolved in an instant in the seething 

 foam, reminding one of Coleridge's graphic, although perhaps rather overdrawn, description : ' A beautiful 

 white cloud of foam at momently intervals coursed by the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars of 

 flame danced and sparkled and went out in it ; and every now and then light detachments of this white cloud- 

 like foam darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own small constellation, over the sea, and scoured out 

 of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness.' Darwin writes in ' The Voyage of the Beagle ' Jed. 1893, 

 p. 154) : ' While sailing a little south of the Plata on one very dark night, the sea presented a wonderful and 

 very beautiful spectacle. There was a fresh breeze, and every part of the surface, which during the day is 

 seen as foam, now glowed with a pale light. The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phos- 

 phorus, and in her wake she was followed by a milky train. As far as the eye reached the crest of every wave 

 was bright, and the sky above the horizon, from the reflected glare of these lurid flames, was not so utterly 

 obscure as over the vault of the heavens.' Later on, in discussing this phenomenon, he says, ' I am inclined 

 to consider that the phosphorescence is the result of the decomposition of the organic particles, by which 





