Order PKOCELLABIIFORMES.J 



[Family DIOMEDEIMl. 



4H 



DIOMEDEA 8ALYINI 



(SALYIN'S ALBATROS.) 



Diomedea cauta (nee Gould), Buller, Birds of New Zealand, vol. ii., p. 203. 



On the unimpeachable authority of the late Mr. Salvin, Mr. Eothschild has renamed the bird 

 which has hitherto been known to us as Diomedea cauta, and has referred it to the genus Thalas- 

 sogeron. The type of Gould's Diomedea cauta is in the British Museum, and the present form is 

 distinguished thus : Similis Th. cauto, sed rostro multo minor e, ad basin minus elevato, plumbescente 

 nee albido, tar sis et digitis brevioribus quoque dignoscendus. Mr. Rothschild adds : " In coloration 

 this species is apparently greyer on the head and neck, the dark loral mark in front of the 

 eye being very conspicuous." 



The chief engineer of the ' Hinemoa,' Mr. Bethune (who showed me the stuffed heads of all 

 the species), assured me that Diomedea salvini, which is appreciably larger than D. bulleri, is 

 found breeding only on the Bounty Islands, to which group it resorts, for reproductive purposes, 

 in countless numbers at the usual season. Both these species are furnished with the peculiar 

 moustachial membranes described below, which they disclose by raising the feathers when 

 irritated or excited. Captain Fairchild, says : " All the Albatroses on Antipodes Island are dark 

 birds (D. exulans). Diomedea regia is never found there ; and, so far as I can learn, D. regia is 

 the only species that inhabits Campbell Island." 



I have received four eggs of Salvin's Albatros from the Bounty Islands, where Captain 

 Fairchild visited its breeding-place. They differ slightly in size, the largest measuring 4 in. in 

 length by 2*6 in. in breadth, and the smallest 3'75 in. by 2"3 in. They are broadly ovoido-elliptical 

 in shape, and the shell is finely granulated. Two of them are creamy-white, with the larger end 

 thickly splashed with umber-brown, the colouring in one of them being almost as rich as in 

 a Merlin's egg, with a few rounded spots at the smaller end. The other two eggs have only 

 a faint wash of brown at the larger end, with widely-scattered blots (some of them with open 

 centres) all over the surface. 



I lately obtained a live bird of this species which was captured at Island Bay. What struck 

 me most was the beautiful appearance of the head — " quite a model," as the intelligent cabman 

 who brought it to me observed. It has a perfectly rotund appearance — most noticeable in a front 

 view — owing to the feathers being puffed out. This character is lost in the dead bird, and 

 necessarily so in the ordinary cabinet skin, but it could easily be represented in the mounted bird. 

 I think this species is without question the most beautiful of the group, as to form and 

 colour, although Diomedea regia for size and snowy whiteness takes the palm. In life, the 

 bare membrane down the base of the lower mandible, and the moustachial membrane on the 

 cheeks (usually hidden by the feathers), are of a rich orange-yellow. The black line along 

 the base of both mandibles (outside the yellow membrane on the lower), and from the root of the 

 forehead to the nostrils, is far more conspicuous in the living bird than in dried specimens. The 

 ridge or space between these lines, as well as the whole of the culmen, is of a very delicate 

 lemon-yellow, changing to light horn-colour on the hook. The sides of both mandibles are 

 dull olive-grey, changing to dull pinky-yellow along the rami of the lower mandible, which has its 

 terminal expansion uniform slaty-black. The sides of the mouth, upper and lower, are fringed 

 with a yellow membrane, which, from the junction at the gape, extends obliquely upwards 



