3694 Birds. 



and worn at the edges : all these feathers are white at the base, but 

 that colour does not show on the surface. The rump and upper tail- 

 coverts are white, the feathers of the latter elongated. The tail is 

 rounded, and consists of twelve feathers, the outer pair white, edged 

 and broadly tipped with blackish brown, the next four pair are simi- 

 larly coloured, but only slightly edged, the tips of each pair being 

 darker as they approach the middle ; the shafts of the quills in all 

 these are white : the middle pair of quills are brownish black nearly 

 all their length, their basal part being white, and have their shafts cor- 

 responding in colour to their webs. The wing-coverts are blackish 

 brown, bordered with a lighter shade of that colour, the borders of the 

 middle and lower coverts being so broad as to appear like two light- 

 coloured bars across the wing; the quill -feathers are blackish brown, 

 with shafts of the same colour, the first quill-feather being the long- 

 est ; the under surface of the wings, as far as can be ascertained, is 

 white. The naked parts of the tibiae, the tarsi, and the basal halves 

 of the toes and interdigital membranes appear to have been dusky yel- 

 low, the rest of the feet and the claws are black. Mr. Newcome tells 

 me that this specimen was a female, and that when fresh killed its iri- 

 des were deep brown or hazel colour. 



The bird having been stuffed, it is difficult to ascertain some 

 of its dimensions. Mr. Gurney, who took considerable pains to 

 measure correctly its whole length, informed me that it must have 

 been about 16 inches. Some of the measurements, which may be 

 taken as certain, are these : — Length of the ulna about 4j inches ; 

 from the carpal joint to the end of the longest wing-feather is rather 

 more than 12 inches. The length of the naked portion of the tibia is 

 rather more than half an inch ; of the tarsus rather less than lj inch ; 

 and of the middle toe, excluding the claw, about If inch. The 

 form and proportions of the beak are well shown in the full-size en- 

 graving of the head of the bird on the preceding page, and which also 

 accurately exhibits its peculiar expression, principally caused by the 

 singular prominent forehead, so unlike that of any other members of 

 the petrel family with which I am acquainted. This, Mr. Newcome 

 assures me, was very conspicuous in the bird before it was skinned, 

 and that in fact it has almost exactly the same cast of countenance 

 now as when recently dead. Mr. George Robert Gray, to whom I 

 sent the drawings from which the engravings illustrating this paper 

 were taken, with a request that he would inform me whether they re- 

 presented the bird as differing from the specimen which belonged to 

 the Zoological Society, or from the figure in the ' Planches Coloriecs,' 



