3 92 STORMY PE TREL. 



Length, six inches and three-quarters ; extent, thirteen 

 inches and a half ; bill, black ; nostrils, united in a tubular 

 projection, the upper mandible grooved from thence, and 

 overhanging the lower like that of a bird of prey ; head, back, 

 and lower parts, brown sooty black ; greater wing- coverts, pale 

 brown, minutely tipt with white ; sides of the vent, and whole 

 tail-coverts, pure white ; wings and tail, deep black, the latter 

 nearly even at the tip, or very slightly forked ; in some speci- 

 mens, two or three of the exterior tail-feathers were white for 

 an inch or so at the root ; legs and naked part of the thighs, 

 black ; feet, webbed, with the slight rudiments of a hind toe ; 

 the membrane of the foot is marked with a spot of straw 

 yellow, and finely serrated along the edges ; eyes, black. Male 

 and female differing nothing in colour. 



On opening these, I found the first stomach large, contain- 

 ing numerous round semi-transparent substances of an amber 

 colour, which I at first suspected to be the spawn of some fish, 

 but on a more close and careful inspection, they proved to 

 be a vegetable substance, evidently the seeds of some marine 

 plant, and about as large as mustard seed. The stomach of 

 one contained a fish, half digested, so large that I should have 

 supposed it too bulky for the bird to swallow ; another was filled 

 with the tallow which I had thrown overboard ; and all had 

 quantities of the seeds already mentioned both in their stomachs 

 and gizzards ; in the latter were also numerous minute pieces 

 of barnacle shells. On a comparison of the seeds above men- 

 tioned with those of the Gulf-weed, so common and abundant 

 in this part of the ocean, they were found to be the same. 

 Thus it appears that these seeds, floating perhaps a little 

 below the surface, and the barnacles with which ships' bottoms 

 usually abound, being both occasionally thrown up to the sur- 

 face by the action of the vessel through the water in blowing 

 weather, entice these birds to follow in the ship's wake at 

 such times, and not, as some have imagined, merely to seek 

 shelter from the storm, the greatest violence of which they 

 seem to disregard. There is also the greasy dish-washings 



