. A history of British birds . between her mandibles (Linn. Trans, xiii. p. 617). The bill is black; the irides dark brown ; head, neck,back, wings, and tail sooty-black; outer edges of wing-coverts greyish-white; upper tail-coverts white, tipped withblack; chin, throat, breast, belly, vent, and under tail-covertsof a sooty-black, rather lighter than the upper parts ; sidesof the vent white ; legs, toes, and membranes black. Thewhole length of the bird is not quite six inches ; the wing,from the bend, four inches and five-eighths. The young-bird, till twelve months old, is not quite so dark in
. A history of British birds . between her mandibles (Linn. Trans, xiii. p. 617). The bill is black; the irides dark brown ; head, neck,back, wings, and tail sooty-black; outer edges of wing-coverts greyish-white; upper tail-coverts white, tipped withblack; chin, throat, breast, belly, vent, and under tail-covertsof a sooty-black, rather lighter than the upper parts ; sidesof the vent white ; legs, toes, and membranes black. Thewhole length of the bird is not quite six inches ; the wing,from the bend, four inches and five-eighths. The young-bird, till twelve months old, is not quite so dark in colour;edges of wing-coverts rusty-brown ; no white on the marginsof the wing-coverts, and less white at each side of the J. H. Gurney, jun., has an albino of this species. The nestling is covered with a soft, wool-like, greyish-black down. The Rev. S. H. Saxby, who weighed five ofthese Petrels taken from their burrows, found that theiraverage weight was nearly half an ounce. 48 TUB IN A RES. OCEANITID^. OCEANITES OCEANICA (Kubl*). WILSONS PETREL. Thalassidroma Wilsoni. OcEANiTEs, Keyserling and BJasius\.—Bill small and weak, the unguisgradually decurved ; nasal tubes perfectly horizontal. Wings exceedingly long,the second quill-feather much the longest, the first quill being shorter than thefourth, and slightly exceeding the fifth. Tail almost square. Legs long andslender, bare for a considerable distance above the tarsal joint; feet nearly aslong as the tarsi, membranes emarginate, hind toe absent. This long-legged Petrel was noticed and figured as Pro-cellaria pelagica by Wilson (Am. Orn. vii. p. 90, pi. 6), under the impression that it was identical with theStorm Petrel, but the earliest scientific description of it wasgiven by Kuhl in 1820. In 1824 Bonaparte published amemoir on four species of Storm Petrels, with the distinctivecharacters, measurements, and figures of each, in the* Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- * Pr
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