520 
LAllIDyE. 
NAT A TORES. 
LARTDjE. 
FORK-TAILED PETREL. 
Thalassidkoma leachii. 
PLATE CXLV. FIG. II. 
I WAS in hopes that I should have been able to have 
given a more detailed account of the habits of this 
species, kindly promised me by Sir William Milner, who 
first had the good fortune to discover its eggs ; not hav¬ 
ing, however, received this communication in time, I 
must content myself with repeating the curt account 
contained in the “ Zoologist/' 
Sir William found the Fork-tailed Petrel on Dun and 
Borrera, part of the St. Kilda group of islands. On 
Dun, not far from the top of the cliffs, he found a colony 
of these birds breeding, as the stormy petrel does, under 
stones and rock about a yard deep. He says, “ we 
were first attracted to them by a low, chirping noise, 
which from time to time the females made while sitting 
upon their eggs. In one hole only did we find the male 
and female sitting together. They are nearly three weeks 
before the stormy petrel in depositing their eggs; and in 
the localities where we found the Fork-tailed Petrel there 
was not a single stormy petrel/’ 
The eggs, like those of the stormy petrel, are very 
nearly oval, and are usually surrounded near the larger 
