2G 
COL. H. W. FEILDEN ON THE DESERTED DOMICILE 
the Diablotin, for the purpose of reproducing its race ; that 
island, with Guadeloupe, being the only two places yet known 
to naturalists, which were for a certainty resorted to during the 
breeding season. The young of various species of Petrels appear 
to have been considered useful articles of diet by our ancestors. 
The nestlings of the Manx Puffins are mentioned by Ray, 
"Willughby, and Pennant as such ; and the young of the same 
species are, at the present day, looked on as one of the choicest 
morsels among all the feathered visitors to the Fieroe Islands, 
and their capture is guarded by laws and local regulations. Hughes, 
in his history of Barbados, published in 1750, describes the 
breeding of the colony of birds on a little coral rock off the 
north-west shore of Barbados, and how greatly the young were, 
in his day, esteemed for the table. I am happy to say that, 
though nearly a century and a half has elapsed since Hughes 
published his work on the natural history of Barbados, its colony 
of Audubon’s Petrel, as I have recently found the species to be, 
still flourishes on the Bird Rock, apparently in undiminished 
numbers.* It was the esteem for the flesh of the Diablotin, by 
the French and Creole inhabitants of Dominica and Guadeloupe, 
that has been the means of handing down to posterity very 
exact and minute accounts of this bird, and its habits at their 
breeding-stations. 
The earliest notice of the Diablotin in the French Antilles, with 
which I am acquainted, is that of the Pore du Tertre, “ Missionaire 
Apostolique dans les Antilles,” who gives a short account of the 
Diablotin in his great work on the 1 Histoire Generate cles Antilles,’ 
published at Paris, 1GGG — 71. It is to be found at page 257 of the 
second volume, which is devoted to the ‘Histoire Naturelle des 
Antilles habitees par les Francois.’ The good father appears to 
have had but a very meagre personal acquaintance with the bird, 
though he resided five or six years in Guadeloupe. He writes 
as follows : — 
“ Le Diablo est un oyscau nocturne, ainsi nomine par les habitans des 
Tndes, tl cause do sa laideur. II est si rare, que ie n’en ay jamais pft voir 
un seul, sinon de nuict, & on volant. Tout ce quo j’cn ay ptl apprendre 
des Chasseurs, est quo sa forme approche fort de cello du Canart, qu’il a la 
vend afl’reuse, le plumage mesle do blanc & de noir; qu’il repairo dans les plus 
* Sec ' Ibis,’ 1880, pp. 60—63. 
