THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
that thirteen of the survivors were on Crozet Islands . . . The date on the 
tin collar was 13th September, 1887 ; the bird was picked up three weeks 
later.” This example seems a wonderful instance of the sagacity of the 
observation made by the Editor (/6^s, 1867, p. 191) when Hutton recorded 
that he caught many sea-birds and let them go with ribbons round their necks, 
concluding, “ None of these birds were seen again during the voyage.” The 
Editor’s note reads : “ Some of these experiments are, perhaps inconclusive ; 
for it seems just possible that the decorations may have had the effect of 
frightening the wearers to death. I have known the case of a Raven — a bird 
certainly not less courageous than a Petrel — caught by a shepherd and 
liberated unhurt, but with a white fillet hung loosely round its neck. That 
bird was never seen again alive. Some days after, I found its dead body, on 
which there was not the slightest trace of any injury.” 
The Crozet bird, with the tin plate round its neck, seems to have suffered 
in the same way, flying ever eastward, until it fell, “ exhausted and dying.” 
The Kerguelen bird would seem a more likely bird to occur on the Westralian 
coast, and it may be that stragglers do so, but much study and many specimens 
are requisite to understand these birds and their habits. 
Hall gives the following account of the bird on Kerguelen Island : — 
“ The feathers of the immature birds in this group were dark on the crown 
of the head, while those on the back and head were not pure white but like 
those of D. exulans ; though otherwise these birds of one year old were similar 
to their parents in appearance . . . Later on I saw eight birds closely 
assembled, four of which I considered mature and the other four young. One 
was quite brown, with perhaps a little white on the face, but the others were 
blotched with sombre colour on their necks ... In the month of February, 
out at sea (102° E. 43° S., Feb. 2, 1898), I noticed an Albatross which looked 
like a link between this uniformly brown young bird and the almost mature 
white-necked one. It was dark brown, except the bill, face, cheeks and throat, 
which were white, with two white lines of feathers in the wings close to the 
body as it floated on the water ; the under sides of the wings had two wide bands 
of bluish-white and black. It was a piebald bird, and the only one seen by me 
throughout the trip. This was most likely a last season’s bird, late in its 
moult, but not so late as the very brown one. These three stages may be 
normal, and probably are such . . . Two of the sitting birds protographed 
were not mature. In one case the back was barred and in the other the wing 
coverts were far from being white. I observed sitting birds in three states 
of plumage, in what I would be inclined to think the second, third, and fourth 
years of age. The skin prepared by us does not quite agree with Mr. Salvin’s 
description in his key {Cat. Birds Brit. Mus., Vol. XXV., p. 440) for the scapulars 
256 
