54 ALBATROSS. 



4 —SOOTY ALBATROSS. 



Diomedea fuliginosa, Ind. Orn. ii. 791. Gm. Lin. i. 568. 



Black Albatross, Lin. Trans, xii. 489. 



Albatross with a white e3'e-brow, Cook's Voy. i. p. 38 ? 



Black-billed Albatross, Parkins. Voy. p. 84 ? 



Sooty Albatross, Gen. Syn. v. 309. Forst. Voy. i. 91. 



SIZE of a Goose ; length nearly three feet. Bill black ; irides 

 pale yellow; at each angle of the eye a nictitating membrane; 

 general colour of the plumage brown ; the head and tail inclining 

 to black or soot-colour; for a small space above, behind, and beneath 

 the eye white, but not on the fore part; quills and tail dark brown, 

 almost black, the shafts of the feathers of both white, the last pointed 

 in shape; legs pale brownish lead-colour; claws black. 



This is a general inhabitant throughout the Southern Ocean, 

 within the Antarctic Circle ; first met with in lat. 47. south;* was 

 called by our sailors the Quaker, from its brown plumage : is pro- 

 bably the same which Forster calls the Least of the Albatrosses,t 

 met with off Kerguelen's Land, in the month of December .J 



This is also found tG breed in the Islands of Tristan da Cunha ; 

 is gregarious, many of them building their nests close to each other: 

 in the area of half an acre were reckoned upwards of a hundred. 

 The nest is of mud, raised five or six inches, and slightly depressed 

 at the top : when the young birds are more than half grown, they 

 are covered with a whitish down : they stand on their respective 

 hillocks like statues, till approached close, when they make a strange 

 clattering with their beaks, and if touched, squirt a deluge of foetid, 

 oily fluid from the stomach. § 



* First met with about the time of first falling- in with the ice. — Cook's Voy. i. 38. 

 f Voy. i. p. 91. + Cook's Last Voy. i. 87. § Captain Carmichael. 



