NATATORES. 



415 



8. Procellaria nivea, Qmel'm. — The Snowy Petrel. 



Procellaria nivea, Gm. Syst. Nat. I, p. 562 (1788) ? 



" Procellaria Candida, Peale, MSS." Peale, ZooI. Exp. Exp. Birds, p. 295 (1848). 



Voy. Erebus and Terror, Birds, Plate XXXIY, 

 Atlas, Ornithology, Plate XLII. Adult. 



" Irides brown ; feet bluish flesh-color. Total length fourteen and 

 one-tenth inches ; extent of wings thirty inches." (Peale.) 



The Snowy Petrel appears to be one of the most abundant species 

 frequenting the highest southern latitudes yet visited by voyagers. In 

 those regions, in which the present Expedition, in the Vincennes and 

 Peacock, made the extraordinary and most important discovery of a 

 Polar Continent, this bird is one which presents the snowy whiteness 

 of plumage known to prevail in animals whose peculiar habitat is the 

 polar regions of the North. 



Of the Zoology of the Antarctic continent very little is known ; but, 

 there is no reason why it should not be inhabited by a peculiar Fauna, 

 analogous to, but probably very different from, that of its antipodes of 

 the North. No Bear, nor Walrus — no Snowy Owl, nor Arctic Fox, has 

 yet been discovered, but, in the absence of investigation, an analogous 

 Fauna may perhaps be safely supposed to exist. Of this especially 

 Polar Fauna, the bird now before us possesses the high interest of 

 being, as yet, the only known species of the Antarctic regions, 



Mr. Peale's observations on the present bird are as follows ; 



" It inhabits the Antarctic regions. The specimens were obtained 

 in latitude 64° S., and about 104° W. of Greenwich. We saw them 

 only in the vicinity of ice, and whatever was thrown overboard from 

 the ship they flew around to pick up, like the Cape Pigeons [Procel- 

 laria capensis), but they were not so easily caught with a hook and 

 line. A number of specimens were preserved, and all are of the same 

 unspotted white, without any indication of black shafts to the feathers, 

 which, having been given by Dr. Latham as a characteristic of the 

 Snowy Petrel obtained by Captain Cook, we were induced, from this 

 and some minor differences, to consider the present as a distinct 

 species, until the excellent plate representing it was published in the 

 Zoological Atlas of the Voyage of H. M. Ships Erebus and Terror." 



