NEW ZEALAND WHITE-CHINNED PETREL. 
Captain Hutton,* writing of this Petrel found breeding on Antipodes 
Island, observes that : “ All the birds on this breeding station had white chins, 
and none had any white markings on the face. The legs and feet are black. 
The bill, when fresh, had the sides of the upper mandible and the tubes blue, 
the culmen and unguis black, the lower edge of the lower mandible was flesh- 
colour. 
“ The old birds were sitting on fresh-laid eggs in December, while in the 
following May the young birds were fully fledged, although still in their nests. 
These young birds had the plumage in every respect similar to that of 
the adult.” 
The bird figured in White’s Journ. Voy. New South Wales, p. 252, PL 1790, 
as Procellaria fuUginosa appears to be the form frequenting the Cape seas, but 
as White says absolutely nothing about where he observed or procured it we 
cannot, of course, decide anything. The constancy in measurements of these 
birds is again noticeable when breeding birds are examined. Six specimens 
from the Auckland and Antipodes Islands in the Rothschild Museum give the 
wing-measurement as 382, 382, 382, 384, 386 mm., the sixth moulting. The 
specimens in the British Museum are between the extremes, being 383, 385. 
Note. — Forster described Procellaria nigra (Descr. Anim., ed. Licht., p. 26, 1844) 
from a specimen apparently like my P. a. mixta. His name was however proposed as a 
substitute name for Linne’s P. cequinoctialis. I have treated it as such, and not as recog- 
nisable as a different name to be used for a different race. The type-locality of Forster’s 
P. nigra would therefore be Falkland Islands. 
* Trans. New Zeal. Inst. 1894, Vol. XXVII., p. 177, 1895. 
