360 
PROCELLARIIDiE. 
one inch and three quarters long, by one inch and five sixteenths 
broad.” {Gould, Handbk. Bds. Ausl., Yol. ii., p. 417.) 
Hob. Cape York, Rockingham Bay, New South Wales, Victoria 
and South Australia, West and South-West Australia, South 
Coast New Guinea. (Ramsay.) 
Family PROCELLARIIDiE. 
Genus NECTRIS, Bonaparte. 
NECTRIS BREVICAUDUS, Brandt. 
Short-tailed Petrel. 
Gould, Handbk. Bds. Aust., Vol. ii., sp. 636, p. 459. 
Tliis Petrel is found on the eastern and southern coasts of 
Australia, and is particularly plentiful on the islands of Bass’s 
Straits and Tasmania. On Phillip Island, in Western Port Bay, 
Victoria, it arrives in thousands, usually on the evening of the 24th 
of November, to deposit its single egg in a burrow in the earth, 
which is often from three to four feet in length. On the morning 
of the 25th and for several days after, the place is like a fair, the 
fishermen from the Bay and usually a number of visitors from 
Melbourne and elsewhere, being busily engaged in extracting the 
eggs from the burrows, which to a novice is no easy task. During 
a recent visit to the breeding grounds of this species two 
experienced fishermen took no less than sixty dozen eggs in one 
day. Notwithstanding the great amount of eggs and birds 
annually taken, there seems to be no diminution in their 
numbers, and they resort to the same places to breed regularly 
year after year. 
The eggs are pure white and vary in form from true ovals to 
elongated and pointed ovals. Six selected from over a hundred 
specimens measure as follows: — length (A) 2'81 x 1-98 inches; 
(B) 2-95 x 1-9 inches ; (C) 2-87 x D9 inches ; (D) 2-97 x D75 
inches; (E) 2-7 x 1-85 inches; (F) 275 x D85 inches. 
