260 
STORMY PETREL. 
one can examine their form and plumage with nearly as much 
accuracy as if they were in the hand. They fly with the wings 
forming an almost straight horizontal line with the body, the 
legs extended behind, and the feet partly seen stretching beyond 
the tail. Their common note of weet, weet,” scarcely 
louder than that of a young Duck of a week old, and much re- 
sembling it. During the whole of a dark, wet and boisterous, 
night which I spent on deck, they flew about the after rigging, 
making a singular hoarse chattering, which in sound resembled 
the syllables tu cuk cuk tu tu, laying the accent strong- 
ly on the second syllable iret. Now and then I conjectured 
that they alighted on the rigging, making then a lower curring 
noise. _ . 
Notwithstanding the superstitious fears of the seamen, who 
dreaded the vengeance of the survivors, I shot fourteen of these 
birds one calm day, in lat. 33°, eighty or ninety miles off the 
coast of Carolina, and had the boat lowered to pick them up. 
These I examined with considerable attention, and found the 
most pei’fect specimens as follow: 
Length six inches and three quarters; extent thirteen inches 
and a half; bill black, nostrils united in a tubular projection, the 
upper mandible grooved thence, and overhanging the lower 
like that of a bird of prey; head, back and lower parts, brown 
sooty black; greater wing-coverts pale brown, minutely tipt 
with white; sides of the vent, and whole tail-coverts, pure 
white; wings and tail deep black, the latter nearly even at the 
tip, or very slightly forked; in some specimens, two or three 
of the exterior tail feathers were white for an inch or so at the 
root; legs and naked part of the thighs black; feet webbed, with 
the slight rudiments of a hind toe, the membrane of the foot is 
marked with a spot of straw yellow, and finely serrated along 
the edges; eyes black. Male and female differing nothing in 
colour. 
On opening these I found the first stomach large, containing 
numerous round semitransparent substances, of an amber colour, 
which I at first suspected to be the spawn of some fish; but on a 
