THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
wanting, unless the notch at the base of the bill can be taken for them ; the 
pupils of the eyes are black: their irides are white and surrounded with 
black ; the head, the neck, back, the upper side of the wing, and the inner 
margin thereof, together with the tail are quite black ; the breast, the belly, 
and the uropygium are white, waved with blackish-grey ; the down and the 
lower coverts of the wings, in particular the ten longest and innermost, are 
white ; all the sixty-four quill feathers are very black, with whitish-grey below ; 
the first quill-feather is the longest, the next to it decrease gradually ; there 
are ten quiU feathers on the first joint, on the second thirty, on the third 
or innermost fourteen ; and more secondary feathers. The upper-coverts 
are tipped with grey ; the lower are dirty white, with little black edges ; the 
tail has fourteen feathers ; the thighs are covered with grey feathers ; the 
legs naked and whitish, like the four toes ; the first toe has five, the second 
four, the third three, and the fourth two joints ; no back toe is to be met 
/ with ; the heart is oval : the liver is long. The bird is the size of a raven. 
The female is somewhat less : the bill is more serrated and reddish towards 
the head ; the neck and the upper-coverts of the wing are white ; the three 
first quill feathers are quite black, as in the male ; the next following ones 
are grey, spotted, and the last white, mixed with black ; the back, the 
coverts of the wings, and the thirteen feathers of the tail are white, spotted 
with reddish-yellow ; the middlemost feather in the tail is the longest ; the 
toes and legs are red ; the rest the same with the male. Whether this is the 
female of the first described bird, I leave to others to examine. It may be 
compared with the Anser hassanus of Albin^ Vol. I., p. 86.” 
On p. 293, having arrived back at Ascension Island in 1752, Osbeck 
wrote (to quote again Forster’s translation, Vol. II., p. 89): Diomedea 
adscensionis was caught here. It was entirely white, not even the thirteen 
feathers of the tail excepted ; had red feet, formed chiefly for swimming, 
and only black tips to its wings ; for the rest, it is like the Diomedea piscatoria 
{Pelecanus piscator) which is likewise to be met with here.” 
Consideration of the preceding compels me to dismiss Osbeck’s male bird 
as indeterminable, as I cannot see how the present bird can be compared as 
“ quite black ” and “ all the sixty-four qufil feathers are very black.” I would 
also note “ the female is somewhat less.” The description of the female 
appfies closely to this bird, but then the female is a larger bird than the male ; 
consequently the description of the male must have been drawn up from 
another species of Gannet. The type locality must be “ Java Seas,” and 
from Christmas Island, Indian Ocean, almost the type locality, three species 
of Gannets were brought back by Mr. (now Dr.) C. W. Andrews, F.R.S., of 
the British Museum, namely Sula sula (recte Sula leucogaster Boddaert), Sula 
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