cxxxiv 
INTRODUCTION. {Prior Discoveries. 
, hour before their squabblings ceased, and every one had found its 
own retreat. The people of the Sydney Cove had a strong example 
of perseverance in these birds. The tents were pitched close to a 
piece of ground full of their burrows, many of which were necessa- 
rily filled up from walking constantly over them; yet, notwith stand- 
ing this interruption, and the thousands of birds destroyed, for they 
constituted a great part of their food during more than six months, 
the returning flights continued to be as numerous as before ; and 
there was scarcely a burrow less, except in the spaces actually 
covered by the tents. These birds are about the size of a pigeon, and 
when skinned and dried in smoke we thought them passable food. 
Any quantity could be procured, by sending people on shore in the 
evening. The sole process was to thrust in the arm up to th# shoulder, 
and seize them briskly ; but there was some danger of grasping a 
snake at the bottom of the burrow, instead of a petrel. 
The pinguin of these islands is of the kind denominated little ; the 
back and upper parts are of a lead-coloured blue ; the fore and under 
parts, white. They were generally found sitting on the rocks, in 
the day time, or in caverns near the water side. They burrow in 
the same manner as the sooty petrel ; but, except in the time of rear- 
ing their young, do not seem, like it, to return to their holes every 
night. The places preferred for breeding are those at the back of 
the shore, where the sand is overspread with salt plants ; and they 
were never found intermixed with the petrels, nor far from the salt 
water. Their flesh is so strong and fishy, that had not the skins 
served to make caps, rather handsome, and impenetrable to rain, the 
pinguins would have escaped molestation. 
No other quadrupeds than the kanguroo, womat, and duck-billed 
aculeated ant-eater were found upon the islands. The kanguroo is 
of a reddish brown, and resembles the smaller species which fre- 
quents the brush woods at Port Jackson : when full grown, it weighs 
from forty to fifty pounds. There were no traces of it upon the 
Passage Isles ; but, upon Cape-Barren and Clarke's Islands, the 
