3692 Birds, 



had acquainted him with Mr. Gould's opinion), that Mr. Gould him- 

 self had described the identical specimen, in a paper read before the 

 Society, as Procellaria rubiitarsi, but that no reference to this paper 

 could be found in the Society's published ' Proceedings.' 



Mr. Yarrell, a few days after, announced to me that he had inde- 

 pendently made the same discovery, telling me that in the letter-press 

 to the 'Planches Coloriees I two specimens are referred to, — one, the 

 subject of the portrait, which was captured in the South Seas, the 

 other, in the Museum of the Netherlands, which came from the Indian 

 Ocean. Mr. Yarrell also further said, that the specimen now in the 

 British Museum had been presented to the Zoological Society by the 

 late John Hearne, Esq., and came from Hayti, that its wooden block- 

 stand was marked " rubiitarsi," and that its tarsi were painted red. 



Having thus got upon the right track, I wrote to Mr. Gould, and the 

 following extracts from his letters in answer to my inquiries, will be, 

 I am sure, read with interest, as affording us the means of conjectur- 

 ing the range of this species. Mr. Gould says : — "The petrel you write 

 about is the same as that to which I gave the name of ' rubritarsi,' but 

 as that name was never published, of course no notice can be taken of 

 it. * * 1 saw your bird in abundance off the Western Islands, 

 and I have little doubt but that it breeds and finds a home in the 

 West Indies, as I have seen specimens in France stated to have been 

 brought from thence, besides which, Mr. Hearne's bird in the Museum 

 of the Zoological Society was from Hayti. I have never seen it from 

 the Indian Seas, and I think Temminck must have been misinformed 

 as to that being its native locality." "The name ' rubiitarsi ' was 

 doubtless proposed under the belief that the red paint on Mr. Hearne's 

 specimen was intended to represent the natural colouring ; but my 

 opinion, after having seen so many of the petrels alive, now is that 

 they were flesh-colour." 



The following is a description of the individual bird whose capture 

 in Norfolk I have above described. The whole of the beak is black : 

 from the crown of the head to the nape of the neck the feathers are white 

 at the base, broadly tipped with dark brown, so as to present, except at 

 the edges of the patch, which is nearly circular, a uniform surface of the 

 latter colour; in front of and below the eye are a few grayish black fea- 

 thers extending over the ear-coverts; the orbits are surrounded with a 

 ring of sepia-brown feathers. The forehead, face, neck, breast, bel- 

 ly, sides, and under tail-coverts are nearly pure white (the departure 

 from that colour being probably only occasioned by the stain of the 

 oil ejected by birds of this genus when captured), but there are also a 



