PROCELLARIA CONSPICILLATA, Gould . 
Spectacled Petrel. 
Procellaria conspicillata, Gould in Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. xiii. p. 362. 
I have always been of opinion that the bird here figured is not strictly referable to the Procellaria cequinoc- 
tialis of Linnaeus ; at the same time it must be admitted that it is most nearly allied to that species ; the 
subject is fraught with the more difficulty from the circumstance of the white markings on the face not 
being always of the same form in different individuals ; and from the gular region being white in some 
instances, while in others it is black. In size the two species are very similar, but all the specimens of the 
present bird that I have seen have a much shorter and more robust bill than the true ceqainoctialis, which 
moreover never has the white mark around the eye, the throat only being white. 
The Procellaria conspicillata flies both in the Atlantic and Pacific, but is most plentiful between the 
twenty-fifth and fiftieth degrees of south latitude. I observed it to be very abundant about the islands of 
St. Paul’s and Amsterdam, and from thence to Van Diemen’s Land ; I also noticed it in considerable 
numbers off the Falkland Islands in the Atlantic and in the neighbourhood of Tristan d’Acunha. 
As might be supposed, it is a bird possessing great powers of flight, and, like the other members of the 
genus, feeds upon mollusca, the remains of dead cetacea, See. 
The sexes are so similar in markings that they are scarcely distinguishable. 
The entire plumage sooty black, with the exception of the chin, sides of the face, and a broad band 
which crosses the forepart of the crown, passes down before and beneath, and curves upward behind the eye, 
which is white ; nostrils and sides of the mandibles yellowish horn-colour ; culmen, tips of both mandibles, 
and a groove running along the lower mandible black ; feet black ; irides dark brown. 
Tbe figures are about two-thirds of the natural size. 
