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REMARKS ON THE ALBATROSS AND PETREL.

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of Pô in Lombardy, mingled with the bones of elephants and hippopotamuses. It bore also two horns on the nose, but had not the bony partition of the nostrils: it also wanted incisive teeth;-in all of which characters it approximates to the living two-horned species of Africa; but its nostrils are much narrower, and the bones of the nose thinner: it is termed Rhinoceros Cuvieri, and Rhin. ptorhinus.

The third species (Rhinoceros incisivus,) is known only by its enormous incisive teeth, which could only have belonged to an animal as large as the two fossil species we have just mentioned, which are totally devoid of this kind of teeth.

Lastly, A fossil species, with incisive teeth, not larger than a common hog, has been discovered; teeth and numerous bones, not only of adult but of old individuals, have been found in France: M. Cuvier denominates it Rhinoceros minutus.

REMARKS ON THE ALBATROSS AND PETREL.

[From Freycinet's Voyage autour du Monde.']

THE Ocean has its own peculiar birds as well as the land. Compelled to traverse incessantly its solitudes to obtain their subsistence, they are endowed with a wonderful power of flight; so that in a few hours they are able to cross immense distances, and to betake themselves to those places to which their instinct directs them. Among these numerous tribes there exist distinctions of manners as decided as the physical characters by which they are classified; and this induces us to give the name of Birds of the Ocean (oiseaux pelagiens), properly so called, to the petrels and the albatrosses. The former are found in every sea, under every meridian, and in almost every latitude. Except the short time which they devote to rearing their young, all the rest of their life is occupied in traversing the ocean, and laboriously seeking in the midst of storms, a scanty sustenance, almost as soon digested as procured; which seems to place them under subjection to a single duty, that of obtaining nourishment.

Boobies (Sula Bassana), Noddies (Sterna), Men of War Birds (Pelecanus Aquilus, Linn.) and Tropic Birds (Phaeton erubescens), although they occasionally take long flights over the sea, do not deserve the name of Birds of the Ocean: they simply make excursions; and preferring their lonely cliffs to the rocking of the waves, they generally return to them every evening.

The discrimination of the several species of Albatross has become a matter of great difficulty, from the many different

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REMARKS ON THE ALBATROSS AND PETREL.

names that successive travellers have bestowed upon them, and from the difference between the sexes, as well as from the change which takes place in the same individual at different ages and at different seasons of the year.

The greatest number of albatrosses are met with between the 55th and 59th parallel of latitude, and probably in that direction they may have no boundary but the polar ice. Although they are to be met with over the whole of this vast space, there are some places for which they have a preference, and in which they are found in greater numbers than elsewhere. They are most abundant about the Cape of Good Hope and about Cape Horn, and both these places are well known to be almost constantly the scenes of very violent storms.-The petrels are more numerous, and more widely diffused, since they are to be met with from pole to pole, and they vary very much in size. The albatross is distinguishable by its great size; but one species of the petrel (Procellaria gigantea) is nearly as large, while another species is as different from this as a sparrow from a goose.

It is certain that fish do serve for food to the albatross and petrel, although they were never seen pursuing the flying fish, which are said to fall a prey to them when they leave the deep, and, betaking themselves to their wings to avoid the enemy in the water, only encounter a new danger in the albatross; nor were any remains, either of these or of the mollusca,-which, as it were, cover these seas, and would alone be sufficient to satisfy one of these birds for a whole day,—ever found in their stomachs. We have seen them surrounded with Sea-blubbers, Physaliæ, Salpæ, &c., but these afforded them no nourishment; they invariably sought other food. This was not the case with cuttlefish and calmars, fragments of which were constantly found in their stomachs.

Öne circumstance which could not escape notice during our long voyages, is the habit, we should almost say the necessity, which these birds are under of frequenting rough seas. The tempest itself does not alarm them; and when the wind is blowing most furiously they may be seen wheeling about without appearing at all affected by it. When, on the other hand, the face of the ocean is smoothed by a calm, they fly to other regions, again to appear with the return of winds and storms. No doubt the reason of this is, that the agitation of the waves brings to their surface those marine animals which serve for food to these birds. It is from the same reason that they keep near the eddying and disturbance occasioned by the passing of a vessel through the water. This design was clearly demonstrated to us when approaching

103 the Cape of Good Hope. We were accompanied by a great number of small petrels of the size of kingfishers, who were busy skimming the surface of the water in a line of exactly the width of our track. None were to be seen anywhere else. We took great care that nothing should be thrown from the corvette; and yet we saw them every instant, darting their bills into the water to seize some object which we were unable to distinguish.

REMARKS ON THE ALBATROSS AND PETREL.

The duration, the rapidity, the strength and the manner of flight of these birds in general, has been a subject of study and astonishment to us. Their agility in casting themselves, like a harpoon, on their prey, in raising it with their beak, their activity in striking the backs of the waves with their foot, or in traversing their long unsteady ridges, were sometimes the only spectacle which the solitudes of the ocean had to offer to us.

One of the peculiar characters of these Palmipedes (webfooted birds) is, that their flight is effected almost entirely by sailing as it were through the air. If they do sometimes flap their wings, it is in order to raise themselves more quickly; In the albatross, which was but such instances are rare. principally remarked upon, both from its great size and from its approaching nearer to the ships, it was observed that their long wings were concave underneath, and that they did not show any apparent vibration in whatever position the bird might be; whether when skimming the surface of the wave they regulated their flight by its undulations, or when rising into the air they described wide circles around the vessel.

Land birds of prey who fly in this way without moving their wings, are generally descending towards the earth when they adopt this mode of flight; while the petrel and the albatross easily raise themselves up into the air, turn quickly round by means of their tail, and go on in the face of the highest wind without their progress appearing to be at all diminished by its force, and without any apparent motion being imparted to their wings. But still we must admit that some impulse is given to the air which sustains them, although we cannot perceive it, it is true, since it probably is exerted at the end of very long levers (at the extremities of their wings); for, otherwise, we cannot conceive how the progressive motion of the animal is accomplished. The exceedingly long wings which many of these birds possess, spoil the beauty of their figure when closed, as they produce a thickness in the posterior part of the body. It is when flying that they display themselves to the greatest advantage; and they are endowed with a wonderful strength to enable them to per

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form their flights. When in 59° south latitude, where there is scarcely any night as long as the sun is under the tropic of Capricorn, we have seen the same petrels sailing on the wing several days together without interruption. The petrels do not dive after their food, but if it lies only at a certain depth, they endeavour to seize it by forcing part of their body under water.

From what has been said it appears, that the mere presence of these birds is not a sure sign of the approach of land.

With respect to the incubation of these pelagic birds, the French naturalists observe, that the petrels flock in immense numbers to the Isles Malouines,' along the shores of which their eggs are deposited in such abundance as to be a source of subsistence to the seamen employed in the seal-fishery. They were also informed that these birds arrange their eggs with much order, and, living as it were in a republic, exercise by turns the function of incubation in this kind of temporary establishment.

The little stormy-petrel (Thalassidroma pelagica, Vigors) breeds in the Orkneys.

Mr. Scarth states*, that in passing over a tract of peatmoss, near the shore, in a small uninhabited island in Orkney, one evening in the month of August last, he was surprised to hear a low purring noise, somewhat resembling the sound of a spinning-wheel in motion; and on inquiry, he was informed by one of the boatmen who accompanied him, that it was the noise commonly emitted by the Alimonty (the Orkney name for the stormy petrel,) that frequented the island when hatching.

On examining a small hole in the ground, he found the bird and its nest, which was very simple, being little more than a few fragments of shells laid on the bare turf. It contained two round pure-white eggs, which were very large in comparison with the size of the bird. When he seized the bird, she squirted out of her mouth an oily substance of a very rancid smell. He took her home, and having put her into a cage, he offered her various kinds of worms to eat; but, as far as he could observe, she ate nothing till after the expiration of four days, when he observed that she occasionally drew the feathers of her breast singly across, or rather through her bill, and appeared to suck an oily substance from them. This induced him to smear her breast with common train oil; and observing that she greedily sucked the feathers, he repeated the smearing two or three times in each day for about a week. He then placed a saucer containing oil in the Linn. Trans. xiii. p. 617.

DEATH OF M. LATREILLE.-EULOGIUM ON CUVIER.

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cage, and he observed that she regularly extracted the oil by dipping her breast in the vessel, and then sucked the feathers as before. In this way he kept her for three months. After feeding, she sat quietly at the bottom of the cage, sometimes making the same purring noise which first attracted his notice, and sometimes whistling very shrilly.

DEATH OF M. LATREILLE.

OUR readers who are interested in the science of Entomology will learn with regret that the death of M. Latreille was announced to the Académie des Sciences on the 11th of February last. This illustrious naturalist, the collaborator of the great Cuvier, was born at Brives (Corrize), in the year 1762; he was attached to the Museum of the Garden of Plants at Paris in 1797, as assistant to Lamarck; with whom he was afterwards made adjunct Professor, and upon his death succeeded to the chair of the Natural History of Invertebrate Animals. He was elected into the Academy of Sciences in 1814. His principal works are: The Natural History of the Salamanders of France, 1 vol. 1800. The Natural and General History of Ants, with a Collection of Memoirs, 1 vol. 8vo. 1802. Natural History of Crustacea and Insects, forming a continuation of Sonnini's edition of Buffon, 14 vols. 8vo. Genera Crustaceorum et Insectorum, 4 vols. 8vo. 1809. Natural History of Reptiles, forming a continuation to the Buffon of Castel, 4 vols. 8vo. The third volume of the 1st edition of Cuvier's Règne Animal, and the fourth and fifth volumes of the 2nd edition of the same work; many Memoirs among those of the Academy of Sciences, and of the Museum of Natural History; and the principal articles on Entomology in the Dictionary of Natural History by Deterville.

He has been succeeded by M. Valenciennes, a naturalist well known since his association with Cuvier in the Histoire Naturelle des Poissons.'

EULOGIUM ON CUVIER.

THE following is translated from M. Valenciennes' Introduction to the Ninth Volume of the great work on Fishes, which has recently appeared.

"We were pursuing assiduously the publication of our work ;-I continued to assist my illustrious master :-Who

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