Our sailors have, from very early times, called these birds "Mother Carey's Chickens," originally bestowed on them, Mr. Yarrell tells us, by Captain Cartaret's sailors, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of the above name. Mr. Yarrell adds:--"As these birds are supposed to be seen only before stormy weather, they are not welcome visitors," a view at variance with that already suggested. The Editor of "Notes and Queries" considers the Petrels to have been called _chickens_ from their diminutive size. The largest sort, "the Giant Petrel," is "Mother Carey's _Goose_;" its length is forty inches, and it expands seven feet. The common kind are about the size of a swallow, and weigh something over an ounce; length, six inches; expansion, thirteen inches; these are Mother Carey's _chickens_ (_Latham_). It should be borne in mind that our language does not restrict the term chickens to young birds of the gallinaceous class. The Missel-bird is another bird of this kind: in Hampshire and Sussex it is called the _Storm Cock_, because it sings early in the spring, in blowing, showery weather. Petrels, by the way, are used by the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands as lamps: they pass a wick through their bodies which, when lighted, burns a long time from the quantity of fat they contain. The Fulmar Petrel, in Boothia, follows the whale-ships, availing itself of the labours of the fishermen by feeding on the carcases of the whales when stripped of their blubber. In return the bird is exceedingly useful to the whalers by guiding them to the places where whales are most numerous, and crowding to the spots where they first appear on the surface of the water. Wild Geese and Ducks are unquestionably weather-wise, for their early arrival from the north in the winter portends that a severe season is approaching; because their early appearance is most likely caused by severe frost having already set in at their usual summer residence. The Rev. F. O. Morris, the well-known writer on natural history, records from Nunburnholme, Yorkshire. December 5, 1864:--"This season, for the first time I have lived here, I have missed seeing the flocks of Wild Geese which in the autumnal months have heretofore wended their way overhead, year after year, as regularly as the dusk of the evening came on. Almost to the minute, and almost in the same exact course, they have flown over aloft from the feeding-places on the Wolds to their resting-places for the night; some, perhaps, to extensive commons, while others have turned off to the mud-banks of the Humber, whence they have returned with equal regularity in the morning.