THE STORM PETREL. 
425 
their occurrence on a more ordinary occasion in the very centre of 
England.”* 
On questioning our bird-preservers respecting the condition of 
the storm petrels skinned by them, they stated, as was anticipated, 
that they had obtained them in excellent, as well as poor condi- 
tion. When a storm, coming suddenly on, drives them to land, 
the birds may be expected to be in good order, as they may 
the reverse when only driven inland after its continuance for 
some time. 
Mr. Harry D. S. Goodsir, of Edinburgh, informed me that in 
the month of October 1843, hundreds of these birds appeared 
about Anstruther, on the coast of Eifeshire, after a storm from 
the east. Some of them appeared about the town, but as the 
storm died away, they gradually went farther out to sea. He one 
day followed them, and in a heavy sea captured thirty, by flinging 
pieces of the liver of cod-fish over the gunnel of the boat, 
when several fighting for the food were caught at a single sweep 
of a landing-net : single birds, too, were captured by the hands 
of the boatmen. The following day my friend took about fifty 
in the same manner, and many more might have been procured, 
had he not cried, “ hold, enough.” He particularly remarked 
several of them to be completely immersed in the water by the 
impetus with which they descended from the air upon the food. 
He preserved a number of specimens in spirits, with one of which 
I was favoured. 
In the month of April, 1841, several small storm petrels came 
under my observation in the Mediterranean, though not so near 
that the species could be determined. On the 16th, one of small 
size appeared, flying like a swift ( Cypselus ) over the surface of the 
water, to the southward of the Straits of Messina ; on the 23rd, 
when about eighty miles east of Malta, two or three were seen at 
some distance flying like swallows, and a couple of others were 
* In the 4 Magazine of Natural History ’ for 1 832 (p. 283), two petrels are re- 
corded to have been found dead at Birmingham in December 1831 ; one was dis- 
covered in a street of the town, the other at a few miles’ distance. The Rev. Mr. 
Bree of Allesly, who saw the former specimen in Weaver’s Museum, has informed 
us that it is the fork-tailed species, T. BullocJcii .- — Ibid. p. 733. 
