152 



Bounty Islands. There is a nest in the Canterbury Museum, and another in the Otago Museum, 

 and another (perhaps more typical still) in Mr. Jennings' collection. It is in the form of an 

 inverted cone and is composed of grass, seaweed, soil, and the droppings of the bird, pressed close 

 together and forming a compact felt-like mass, which becomes hard and solid by exposure to the 

 sun. The Canterbury specimen presents the appearance of a very thick basin with a heavy rim, 

 about fifteen inches in diameter; and in the hollow there lies a single white egg, of a regular 

 ovoid form. 



Nestling. — Has the whole of the body covered with thick grey down ; that on the face being- 

 shorter and almost white. Bill black. 



The adult male in Mr. Jennings' collection has the grey on the neck very conspicuous 

 and a white mark at the back of each eye. 



Captain Hutton writes in ' The Ibis,' for January, 1903 : " No two species of Albatros 

 or Mollymawk are known to breed in the same locality. Even when two different kinds 



DIOMEDEA BULLEKI, Kothschild. 



are found on the same island— as D. exnlans and D. regia on Adam's Island of the Auckland 

 grou p — they occupy widely separated sites. So far as I know, Thalassogeron salvini, of the 

 Bounty Islands, is the earliest species to breed, for it commences at the end of August. 

 D. melanophrys, on Campbell Island, comes next, in the middle of September ; then the Sooty 

 Albatros, Phoebetria fuliginosa, in the end of October, at the Antipodes and Auckland Islands, and 

 a little later at Kerguelen Island. D. regia commences at Campbell Island in the middle of 

 November ; D. chionoptera at Kerguelen in the middle or end of December ; D. exulans in 

 the first week of January at Adam's Island, and the middle of January at Antipodes Island ; and 

 last comes B. bulleri at the Snares-Islands in the end of January. So that there is no less than 

 five months' difference between the first and the last." 



