AUSTKALIAN GANNET, 
Little else regarding its habits appears to have been written. 
Mr. Tom Carter found an old bird dead on the beach as far north as 
Point Cloates on the 30th of September, 1911 : iris yellow, bill greenish-grey, 
legs and feet purplish with green stripes down tarsus and toes. 
The bird figured and described is a male, collected in Tasmania on 
December 10th, 1909, by Mr. Dyott, who very kindly gave me the skin and 
after whom the bird is named. 
This Gannet so closely resembles the European bird that superficially 
the only distinction is in the tail : the European bird, when adult, having 
the tail pure white, the Australian one having the four middle tail-feathers 
brown, the remainder white. The narrow strip of naked skin down the throat 
is of about the same length. In South Africa a similar Gannet is found, but 
the tail is wholly brownish-black, and the naked strip extends about six 
inches down the throat. These three may be considered distinct species, 
but they are so nearly related that I at one time considered them sub- 
species only. 
They constitute quite a distinct group, all three species agreeing in the 
peculiar metatarsal and toe-covering and feathered cheeks and chin. This 
group, when contrasted with the whole of the remaining Gannets, must be 
considered as of generic value. 
The New Zealand bird was named by Gray, a few years after Gould had 
described the Australian bird under a pre-occupied name, and Gray’s name 
has been commonly used for both the Neozelanic and Australian birds. 
I find the latter never get the coloring on the head and neck of such a 
deep shade as the former, and therefore are subspecifically separable. 
The forms of the genus I would recognise may be named thus : 
Sulita bassana (Linne). 
“ Coasts of North Atlantic.” 
Sulita capensis (Lichtenstein). 
South Africa. > 
Sulita senator senator (Gray). \' 
New Zealand. 
Sulita serrator dyotti (Mathews). 
Australia. 
Sula australis Gould (not Stephens 1826) 1841 is a synonym. 
I had nearly overlooked the fact that though this bird has no history 
it was figured in the Watling Drawings No. 293. 
Watling noted : “ One-fourth the size of nature. Native name 
Doo-ro-dang.^^ No mention of this is made in the Supplement to the General 
Synopsis, where Latham dealt with the birds figured by Watling, but in the 
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