516 
LARIDiE. 
NA TA TORES. 
L ARID JR. 
GREATER SHEARWATER. 
PUFFINUS MAJOR. 
PLATE CXLIV. FIG. III. 
The egg of this species from which the drawing is 
made is from the collection of Mr. Yarrell. It was 
brought from the Desertas, a group of four sterile 
rocky islands which lie about twenty miles south-east 
of the town of Funchal in Madeira. Several years ago, 
before the Greater Shearwater had been admitted as a 
British bird, I had a long row in a boat off the coast of 
Northumberland after some large Shearwaters, which 
must have been of this species. I succeeded in wounding 
one but its powers of diving outstripped us in the chase. 
Eggs, said to be those of the dusky petrel, P. obscurus, 
which will be figured as a British bird in the third edition 
of Mr. Yarrell’s work, are in collections; they are, how¬ 
ever, without any of the peculiarities which mark the 
eggs of the petrels, and are much more like eggs of a barn¬ 
door fowl than those of one of mother Cary’s chickens. 
