NEW ZEALAND GIANT PETREL. 
Unfortunately for Forster’s suggestion, Solander’s descriptions and 
Parkinson’s drawings were not given to the literary world ; and the same fate 
befell his own work, for Forster himself accompanied Captain Cook on his 
second voyage, and here again a drawing was made by George Forster of the 
head of this bird, and a detailed description prepared by Forster senior which 
was not pubhshed until seventy years afterward. 
On Captain Cook’s third voyage this bird was met with on Kerguelen Island 
in 1776, when a painting of the bird was made by Ellis, and a detailed figure 
of the beak drawn of natural size ; it was again met with “ amongst the ice ” 
in 1779, and another painting made by Ellis. The first painting was of a 
wholly dark-brown bird, which is certainly not that of the bird described by 
Latham ; the second is of an entirely grey bird, seemingly larger than the pre- 
ceding, but this effect may be simply a fancy of the artist. Ellis’s paintings are 
not natural size, and no proportions are given. The first scientific description 
is that given by Latham {Gen. Synops Birds, Vol. III., p. 396, 1785), as here 
reproduced : — 
GIANT PETREL. 
(G. error). Bigger than a goose ; length forty inches ; expands seven feet. The 
bill is four inches and a half in length, remarkably stout; and the upper mandible 
very hooked at the end ; the tube on the top of it occupies at least two inches and a half 
from the base ; the colour a fine dusky yellow, not unlike that of polished hox-wood ; 
at the angle of the mouth a naked, wrinkled yellow skin ; the crown of the head is dusky ; 
the sides of it, fore part of the neck, breast, and belly, white ; hind part of the neck 
and upper part of the body pale brown, mottled with dusky white ; scapulars, wing 
coverts, quills, and tail, plain dusky brown ; the last six inches in length, and the 
feathers darkest in the middle ; legs four inches long ; the toes five, of a greyish yellow ; 
webs dusky ; the spur behind stout and pointed, but short ; claws dusky. 
Staaten Land, Terra del Fuego and Isle of Desolation, etc. 
Latham in his account of its distribution and habits confuses with it the 
North Pacific Albatros, D. albatrus Pallas. 
Gmelin, in the Syst. Nat, p. 563, 1789, based his description of Procellaria 
gigantea on Latham, as herewith given : — 
Pr. fuscescens albo maculata, subtus alba, humeris, alls, caudaque fuscis, rostro 
pedibusque flavis. 
Quebrantahuessos Bougainv., it. p. 63, &c. &c. 
Giant Petrel. Lath. syn. Ill, 2, p. 396, t. 100. ' 
Habitat in oceano, potissimum australi, circa Staatenland. Terra-del-Fuego, 
insulam desolationis etc., ansere major, 40 poUices longa, agilis, numerosa, instante 
praesertim procella, conspicua, victitans piscibus, phocarum aviumque cadaveribus 
came sapida. 
Narium tubes 2| poUices longus ; in angulo oris membrana nuda, rugosa, flava ; 
vertex obscurus ; tempera alba ; pedum digit! 5, membrana connectente, unguibusque 
obscuris. 
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