appettafir One 



BIOLOGY 



Notes by JAMES MURRAY, Biologist of the Expedition 



the calm evening of our departure for the south, 

 while the New Zealand coast was still in view, the 

 Nimrod was accompanied by a number of southern Black- 

 back or Dominican gulls, with their beautiful white-bor- 

 dered black wings. An occasional cormorant flew past. 

 Next morning these shore birds had left us, and their place 

 had been taken by the albatrosses and petrels which were 

 to keep us company thenceforward till we reached the 

 Antarctic Circle. 



The pretty little speckled cape pigeon just crossed the 

 Circle, and left us next day; the black-browed albatross 

 was seen for a day longer; the sooty albatross went 

 furthest into the Antarctic, and was last seen on Jan- 

 uary 18. 



Just at the Antarctic Circle we were met by those 

 peculiarly Antarctic birds, the snowy and Antarctic 

 petrels. The wide zone of floating ice, a hundred miles 

 or more across, would have been gloomy indeed without 

 those two birds, which frequented this zone in large flocks. 

 These beautiful petrels, the Antarctic, with strongly con- 

 trasting brown and white, the Snowy, pure white except 

 for the black bill and feet, relieved by their bright plumage 

 and sprightly flight the loneliness of this region. A few 

 seals and penguins on the lower bergs were the only other 

 living things among the ice. 



233 



