Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/389

Rh a most noisome odour arising. While I was still wondering whence this was proceeding, one of the fishermen quickly settled the point by placing one of the last-mentioned fishes under my nose. I can assure the reader that I did not allow him to keep it there many seconds. It is a most objectionable stench, and would, in the writer's opinion, serve no doubt to restrain many other fishes from preying upon this one. In general appearance the fish is not unlike the "Flathead" (Platycephalus fuscus), but the mouth is very considerably smaller. I found that the odour was given off from two orifices at the back of the eyes, one on each side of the occiput.

I have no doubt that the story of the's.s. 'Perthshire' will be fresh in the memories of some readers at least. The vessel, while on a five days' voyage from Sydney to the Bluff (N.Z.) during last year, broke down, and was helplessly adrift at the mercy of the elements for a period of five weeks. While she was lying disabled on the 5th of May, about five hundred miles from the nearest land—Cape Howe, N.S.W.—a common "Bronze-wing Pigeon" (Phaps chalcoptera) flew aboard in an exhausted condition. The alighting of land-birds on ships close in shore, when the vessels are "making the land," is not an uncommon occurrence; but that a Bronze-wing Pigeon should have found a haven on a disabled vessel five hundred miles from the nearest land is indeed singular. This Pigeon is a short-flight bird, and, although it travels long distances during the hours of a long summer's day, it does it with frequent rests. How then did this hapless Bronze-wing manage to keep up over the five hundred miles of storm-tossed sea until it reached the vessel? The flock Pigeons of the far west and interior, which come periodically in countless thousands, are tireless flyers, at times coming in such swarms that at a distance they appear like a drifting cloud; then for a year or two they are entirely absent. One of these last-mentioned birds would have negotiated the distance (especially with the strong westerly wind behind it, which was blowing from the land at the time, and had been blowing for some days) with little difficulty. The marvellous thing is that a Bronze-wing should have done it; about the least likely species of Pigeon to attempt the feat—willingly! When I saw the bird it looked very well, and none the worse for its adventures.

Before finishing my notes on this occasion, I would like to