lay at anchor off the town of Vigo, and a solitary indi- 

 vidual extracted from its nesting-hole on a remote 

 island in Scilly, I never met with this Petrel elsewhere 

 than on the open sea. To us landsmen there is a 

 certain " uncanny " feeling on seeing for the first time 

 our ship in a breeze of wind or a calm suddenly 

 environed or followed by these little black Swallow-like 

 birds, that seem to have sprung from the water, and 

 are so entirely different in flight and appearance from 

 what we are accustomed to call sea-birds from the 

 standpoint of terra firma. The Storm-Petrel is not 

 infrequently driven inland by stress of weather, and occa- 

 sionally picked up dead or dying at a great distance 

 from the sea ; but, in my own experience, these occur- 

 rences are not so common in the case of this species as 

 in that of several other oceanic birds, e. g. the Manx 

 Shearwater, the Fork-tailed Petrel, and the Puffin. 



The present bird breeds in colonies on many, if not 

 most, of the islands lying off the coasts of Ireland, 

 Scotland, and Wales, also in one or two of the islets of 

 the Scilly group, but has not, so far as I can learn, 

 been hitherto found breeding upon the mainland or 

 islands off any part of the eastern coast of England. 

 One egg only is laid, and generally deposited under 

 stones fallen from the sea-cliffs or in burrows in soft 

 soil. A very graphic and interesting description of the 

 nesting-habits of the Storm-Petrel in a locality of the 

 latter sort will be found given by the late H. D. Graham 

 in the ' Birds of Iona and Mull ' (Edinburgh, 1890). I 

 have met with this species sparsely throughout the 

 Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Cyprus, but never had 



