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Show 162 MR. H. SAUNDERS ON THE SEA-BIRDS [Mar. 2, Sea-birds procured by Lord Lindsay's party during the voyage to Mauritius to observe the Transit of Venus; and as he also informed me that an accurate register had been kept of the date and the latitude and longitude of each capture, I gladly accepted the task of identifying the species and preparing a list of them. The collection proved to consist of eighteen species, most of them belonging to the Procellariidae ; but of these several are uncommon and little-known forms. Others are more familiar species ; but no specimens can well be considered superfluous in assisting to determine the validity of some of the reputed species in this difficult group, which has lately been taken up by Mr. Osbert Salvin, to whom I am in several cases indebted for valuable assistance. Unusual care appears to have been taken in forming this collection, each specimen being numbered and entered under a corresponding number in a register kept by Dr. J. Galley Blackley, with particulars of date, latitude and longitude of the ship at noon, temperature of the air and of the water, &c. Dr. Copeland's journal has also supplied some other particulars, which I have quoted verbatim. The above details are of considerable value, as they furnish a record of the degrees of latitude where these oceanic species are first met with ; and if similar registers were kept by other ships, and the specimens obtained were brought back for identification, we should in time arrive at some definite knowledge of the range of these pelagic wanderers. Allusions to the occurrence of the first Albatros, "Mollymawk," "Cape Hen," "Cape Pigeon," &c. are, indeed, not wanting in voyages; but there are few records similar to the present in which registration has been followed by identification in the case of so large a number of species. The 'Venus' left Plymouth in October 1874, and the first species on the list was obtained off Trinidad (not to be confounded with our large West-Indian possession), a small island about six miles in circumference, situated in the South Atlantic Ocean in lat. 20° 23' S., and long. 29° 43' W . This rugged rock, with precipitous cliffs, scanty and irregular water supply, and deficient in timber beyond mere brushwood, was originally taken possession of for Great Britain by Captain E. Halley, of the ' Paramore' (afterwards Dr. Halley, Astronomer Royal), in 1700, and in 1781 was occupied for about two months; since which the most important visits have been those of the French corvette * La Coquille ' in 1822, when the island was surveyed, and that of the Italian corvette 'Magenta' in 1868, when two species of Petrel were obtained and described as new. Dr. E. H. Giglioli then recorded for the first time the occurrence in that island of the beautiful snow-white and highly specialized form of Tern Gygis Candida, of which there is one specimen in the present collection. I gather from the scanty material at m y disposal that some of Lord Lindsay's party landed on this island, which is difficult of access owing to its being surrounded by coral reef, although the island itself belongs to the same formation as the coast about Rio Janeiro ; and the paucity of notes on the species observed is therefore the more to be regretted. To make |