125 
Letters , Announcements , tyc. 
raiso and Callao, in about 15° S., I noticed an Albatros which 
was certainly not D. exulans. 
As Captain Hutton^s remarks show, the Albatros “sits down 
to dinner;” and I have seldom read a more graphic description 
than that (p. 282) of its settling down in the water. Quite 
agreeing with his observations respecting the non-diving and 
non-fishing propensities of this bird, I am sorry to say that 
my experience entirely differs from his with regard to the 
habits of the Albatros being quite diurnal. I can of course give 
no account of its movements during dark nights ; but, both by 
moonlight and afterwards in the summer twilight of the An¬ 
tarctic Seas, I have watched these noble birds come sweeping up 
out of space, wheel over the main-truck, and then, without a flap 
of their huge wings, drop away beyond the reach of vision. 
Mingled with the Albatroses were some of a large dark Petrel, 
though the latter always kept astern of the ship, and, from their 
sooty hue, 
“ Like devils of the pit they seemed 
Mid holy cherubim.’ 5 
But here I must stop; for if I attempt to give any further de¬ 
scription of these moonlight nights, some of the pleasantest of 
my life, I shall begin to rhapsodize, and give Captain Hutton 
cause to think that the night-flights of the Albatros are all 
“ moonshine.” 
I have little to say about other birds of the Southern Ocean. 
Cape Pigeons ( Daption capensis ) were duly caught, and as duly 
converted into “sea-pie;” foolish birds! they came further north 
than the Albatroses, and met the ship before we caught the gale 
which gave us such a rattling run. When far south, I observed 
a silvery-grey Petrel, which was, I presume, Procellaria glacia- 
loideSj but I did not capture any examples. Of the common 
Storm- and the Fork-tailed Petrels I have taken many in the 
North Atlantic, by means of stout threads left to trail from the 
taffrail, with a double knot, or just the least bit of “ sennit ” at 
the end, to act as a catch, when the birds become entangled in 
their flight in the wake of the vessel. 
I trust that Captain Hutton^s paper will draw forth some 
observations from other voyagers, especially with respect to the 
