15 
the Sooty Petrel (Mutton Bird). 
fortnight. I believe that every spare cask upon Flinder’s 
Island was filled with eggs. 
I have not been able to ascertain the length of time 
that the hen sits. The season for curing the young 
birds is in April: they leave the island about the latter 
end of that month, and form one scattered flock in the 
Straits. I have actually sailed through them from 
Flinder’s Island to the heads of the Tamar, a distance 
of eighty miles. They shortly after this separate them¬ 
selves into the dense flocks mentioned in the former part 
of this paper, and finally leave the coast. 
Besides Green Island, the principal rookeries of these 
birds are situated between Flinder’s and Cape Barren. 
There are likewise rookeries upon most of the smaller 
islets in Furneaux’s group. The eggs and cured birds 
form a great portion of the food of sealers, and, together 
with the feathers, constitute principal articles of their 
traffic. The mode by which the sealers obtain the feathers 
has been described to me as follows :— 
The birds cannot rise from the ground, but must first 
go into the water; in effecting which, they have made a 
great many tracks to the beach, similar to those of a kan¬ 
garoo : these are stopped before morning, with the ex¬ 
ception of one leading over a shelving bank, at the bottom 
of which is dug a pit in the sand/, the birds, finding all 
avenues closed but this, follow each other in such 
numbers, that, as they fall into the pit, they are imme¬ 
diately smothered by those succeeding them. It takes 
the feathers of forty birds to weigh one pound; conse¬ 
quently, sixteen hundred of these birds must be sacrificed 
to make a feather bed of forty pounds weight. The 
feathers, as Tasmanian travellers well can tell, have a 
strong disagreeable scent. 
It is said, that the Spice Islands will waft their per¬ 
fumes out of sight of land. Be that as it may, I have 
