PRION. 
Dr. A. Smith, appeared the first series of figures of the species differen- 
tiated. I applied to Dr. Peringuey, Director of the South African Museum, for 
information, and he most courteously forwarded me the series from the Museum, 
thereby fixing the records for that country in connection and comparison with 
Smith’s types. 
The careful study of the preceding collections has enabled me to trace 
the development of the bill from the Juvenile to the adult, and thereby fix the 
relationship of many of the puzzling specimens noticed by the author of the 
Monograph. I have also noted the small amount of variation that is apparent 
when breeding series are measured and compared. Regarding the literature 
of the group, I find that the most scientific, accurate, and convincing treatise was 
written by Coues {Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad. 1866, p. 162 et seq.), and it is 
surprising that we should now have to revert to his conclusions almost in toto. 
Dealing with the modification of the bill he considered that (excluding P. cocrulea 
Gmelin on account of the square tail) Prion vittatus Gmelin should be the sole 
member of the genus Prion. 
For Prion turtur Gould, he proposed a new genus — Pseudoprion, and 
included therein P. turtur, P. hanhsi Smith, P. ariel Gould, and ? P. brevirostris 
Gould. Considering the disabilities under which Coues worked, this treatment 
is delightful. From a knowledge of his methods when dealing with the Petrels, 
it would appear that he had no named specimen of P. ariel Gould and he admitted 
he only knew P. brevirostris Gould from literature, but suggested the identity 
of the two later. He notes that P. turtur Kuhl seems to be appHcable more to 
P. ariel Gould than to the bird Gould so applied it, not recognising that these 
were the same species, and also that Halobcena typica Bonaparte should be 
synonymised, following Schlegel. 
Coues’s work was more or less accepted by the New Zealand ornithologists, 
Hutton concluding {Gat. Birds New Zeal., p. 80, 1871) : “A regular sequence of 
the Prions can be formed from P. vittatus to P. ariel ; and therefore I do not 
think it desirable to retain more than three specific names to mark each end and 
the centre of the chain, and ariel, as the latest, will have to be omitted.” 
BuUer {Birds New Zeal., p. 309 et seq., 1873), accepting that view, used 
P. turtur (ex Kuhl)=P. ariel Gould=P. typica Bonaparte: P. banhsi Gould 
=P. rossii Gray, and P. vittatus Gmelin, thereby endorsing Coues’s synonymy. 
In the Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. (Lond.), Vol. 168, 1879, Sharpe, dealing with 
Kerguelen specimens, admitted two species (not four, as stated in the Monograph), 
thus : Prion vittatus Gmelin, p. 135, as synonyms including P. forsteri Latham, 
P. latirostris Bonn, P. banksii Smith, P. magnirostris Gray, and P. australis 
Potts ; p. 137, P. desolatus Gmehn, as synonyms giving P. turtur Kuhl, 
P. ariel Gould, P. rossii Gray, P. brevirostris Gould and Plaloboena typica 
VOL. n. 
201 
