GENUS 95. PROCELLARIA. PETREL. 
SPECIES. P. PELAGIC A.* 
STORMY PETREL. 
[Plate LX.— Fig. 6.] 
Jlrct. Zool. JSTo. 464. — Le Petrel; ou I'Oiseau tempete, PL Enl. 993. 
— Bewick, ii, 223 Peale’s Museum, 3034. 
There are few persons who have crossed the Atlantic, or 
traversed much of the ocean, who have not observed these soli- 
tary wanderers of the deep, skimming along the surface of the 
wild and wasteful ocean; flitting past the vessel like Swallows, 
or following in her wake, gleaning their scanty pittance of food 
from the rough and whirling surges. Habited in mourning, and 
making their appearance generally in greater numbers previous 
to or during a storm, they have long been fearfully regarded by 
the ignorant and superstitious, not only as the foreboding mes- 
sengers of tempests and dangers to the hapless mariner; but as 
wicked agents, connected, some bow or other, in creating them. 
“Nobody,” say they, “can tell any thing of where they come 
from, or how they breed, though (as sailors sometimes say) it 
is supposed that they hatch their eggs under their wings as they 
sit on the water.” This mysterious uncertainty of their origin, 
and the circumstances above recited, have doubtless given rise 
to the opinion so prevalent among this class of men, that they 
are in some way or other connected with that personage who 
has been styled the prince of the Power of the Air. In every 
country where they are known, their names have borne some 
* Procellaria Wilsonii, Bokaparte, Journal .Scad. JVal. Sc. Ph. vol. iii, p. 231. 
— It is not the P. pelagica; of course the synonymes quoted by our author 
do not belong to this bird. 
