DIOMEDEA CULMINATA, Gould . 
Culminated Albatros. 
Diomedea culminata, Gould in Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. xiii. p. 361. 
This species appears to be more plentiful in the Australian seas than elsewhere ; numbers came under my 
notice during a voyage from Launceston to Adelaide, particularly off Capes Jervis and Northumberland; I 
frequently encountered it between Sydney and the northern extremity of New Zealand, and it also occurs 
in the same latitude of the Indian Ocean as abundantly as any of its congeners. It is a powerful bird, and 
is directly intermediate between Diomedea chlororhynchos and D. cauta. The specific differences of the 
three species are so apparent, that I bad no difficulty whatever in distinguishing them while on the wing. 
In chlororhynchos the bill is more compressed laterally, the culmen is round, and the yellow colouring 
terminates in an obtuse point midway between the nostrils and the base ; while in culminata the culmen 
is broad and flat, and has its greyish yellow colouring continued of the same breadth to the base ; the 
feet of the latter are also fully a third larger than those of the former. 
The habits, mode of life, and the kind of food partaken of by the D. culminata , are so precisely similar 
to those of its congeners, that a separate description would he a mere repetition of what has already been 
said respecting the preceding species. 
Back, wings and tail dark greyish black, the latter with white shafts ; head and neck white, washed with 
greyish black ; round the eye a mark of greyish black, interrupted by a streak of white immediately below 
the lower part of the lid ; rump, upper tail-coverts and all the under surface pure white ; hill black ; the 
culmen Torn-colour ; and the edge of the basal three-fourths of the edge of the under mandible orange. 
In the youthful state the head and neck are dark grey, and the hill is of an almost uniform brownish 
black, with only an indication of the lighter colour of the culmen. 
The figure is about two-thirds of the natural size. 
