SOLITARY PETREL. 
agrees in almost every detail with my Barrier Reef bird. This, of course, 
puzzled me, and I was compelled to leave the problem, when I received the Emu^ 
wherein Mr. Hull had described P. intermedins. The description given seems to 
fit my strange birds fairly well, but instead of providing a solution it seems to 
me to have intensified the puzzle. There are thus three specimens, so far 
known, that do not seem to be typical hrevicaudns, one from the Barrier Reef, 
one from Cabbage Tree Island, New South Wales (where P. hrevicaudus does not 
seem to breed), and the other from amongst Phillip Island breeding P. hrevi- 
caudus. I suggest that P. intermedins is the Barrier Reef breeding form of P. 
tenuirostris and that Mr. Hull’s specimen is a straggler, apparently non-breeding, 
and that the Phillip Island one is also a non-breeder that had straggled south 
and gone with the breeding P. hrevicaudus. The only other solution would be 
that it was simply an individual variation, but in view of the facts I do not 
dare to accept this. Collection of series would certainly settle this point, but 
because these Petrels are so very common, and the collection of large series 
would make no visible impression upon their numbers, none are made. To 
me it seems an absolute impossibility to decide such questions as the above 
without ample series. 
I cannot understand Mr. Hull’s statement in his description, that his 
P. intermedins is 4 inches longer than P. hrevicaudus. Surely this is a slip, or 
the make-up of the skin. 
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VOL. n. 
105 
