168 
PROCELL ARIA PELAGICA. 
They fly with the wing’s forming’ an almost straight hori- 
zontal line with the body, the leg’s extended behind, and 
the feet partly seen stretching beyond the tail. Their 
common note of weet , weet , is scarcely louder than that 
of a young duck of a week old, and much resembling 
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 patret tu cuk 
cuk tu tu , laying the accent strongly on the second 
syllable tret. Now and then I conjectured that they 
alighted on the rigging, making then a lower curring 
noise. 
Notwithstanding the superstitious fears of the sea- 
men, 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 perfect 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 from 
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 speci- 
mens 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 more close and careful 
