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other species of Albatros, its aerial evolutions being far more easy, its flight much higher, and its 
stoops more rapid ; it is, moreover, the only species that passes directly over the ship, which it frequently 
does in blowing weather, often poising itself over the masthead, as if inquisitively viewing the scene 
below. At this moment it oifers so inviting a mark for the gunner that it often forfeits its life.” 
In the winter of 1856 I received a very flne specimen from the Wairarapa plains, where it was 
found alive many miles from the sea, apparently blown inland by the violence of the prevailing 
storms. I have since received several specimens from the South Island, all in adult plumage, and a 
young bird from Cook’s Strait, where the violence of the storm had driven it ashore. 
It flies fast and often very near to the surface, almost touching the water, and with the wings 
more angular than in D. eoculans. The black head is very conspicuous, and the length of tail enables 
one to distinguish the species almost at any distance. Its flight is more like that of an ordinary 
Petrel, and it has the same habit of coming up close under the stern of the ship and down into the 
trough of the sea. 
On my last voyage to England {vid Cape Horn) on the I6th March, about lat. 55° S. and long. 
144° W. — in a heavy westerly wind with the thermometer very low,— a pair of these birds came up 
to us and followed our steamer during a great part of the day, although she was making nearly 20 
knots an hour. 
An egg of this species examined by me is of a narrow elliptical form, measuring 4'2 inches in 
length by 2 7 in breadth ; of a dingy brownish white, splashed, dotted, and marked all over its larger 
pole with dull blackish brown. Another, of the same length but somewhat narrower, is of a clear 
greyish white, minutely and indistinctly spotted, and presenting a pretty regular zone of sepia-brown 
near its larger end. 
Some naturalists separate this form from the other Albatroses under the generic name of 
Phoeletria, Eeich., with the following distinguishing characters: — Bill excessively compressed; a 
sulcus on the sides of lower mandible ; feathers forming a deep re-entrant angle on culmen ; an acute 
salient on one side of lower mandible ; nostrils very large ; tail elongated and cuneate. 
As mentioned on page 202, it has been proposed to treat three of the preceding forms of Albatros 
as belonging to one and the same species, but the more specimens I examine the more satisfied I am 
as to their being specifically distinct. In B. cUororhyncha the shape of the head and whole ex- 
pression of the face are so entirely different from D. melanophrys that I do not understand how 
any naturalist who has compared them can confound the species. The dark loral spot is one of the 
distinguishing features of B. mclcinopliTys, but I have seen a very old example in which it had 
entirely disappeared, the whole of the head and neck being snowy white. 
In the Natural-PIistory Museum of the Jardin des Plantes there is a beautiful specimen of 
Biomedea culminata ; head and entire neck delicate uniform slate-grey ; there is no loral spot, but 
there is a dark rim round the eyes ; bill black, with the culmen yellow, broadening on the hook ; 
lower edge of under mandible up to commencement of the symphysial margin, and forming an angle 
upwards at the base, bright yellow. In the same collection there is a very fine speciriien of B. chloro- 
rliynclia, in which the forehead and crown are pure white ; the cheeks and face of a very delicate 
pearl-grey, this wash presenting a distinct boundary line extending from the mandible to the upper 
margin of the eyes ; bill black, with the ridge of the upper mandible and the extreme tip of the lower 
bright yellow, this colour running up into an acute point near the root of the bill, and spreadino’ out 
on the hook, where it deepens into orange-red. In the Liverpool Museum there are two specimens 
of B. melanophrys, in which the colour of the bill is changing from brownish black to yellow. In 
two specimens of B. chlororhyncha in the same collection the bill is perfectly black, with a brio-ht 
yellow culmen, changing to reddish on the ridge of the unguis. 
