“I was rather surprised to observe that this bird was not only entirely incapable of perching, but even of standing upright like birds in general, and as I have seen birds of this genus represented, unless by the aid of its wings. In standing, or rather sitting, the whole of the _tarsus_ (commonly mistaken for the leg) rests on the ground, and it walks in the same awkward position, frequently being obliged to balance itself with its wings. By a more powerful exertion of its wings, however, it was enabled to run along on its toes in the same manner as it does over the surface of the waves. The absence of a hind toe, the nails being but slightly bent and flat, and perhaps I may add, its evidently being unaccustomed to this description of locomotion, seemed to be the causes of its helplessness on its feet. “These birds have been numerous about us for some days past, and their coursing over the water with flitting wings remind me of the actions of butterflies about a pool. One of them was seen swimming, or at least resting, on the surface. We have seen this species very frequently, indeed almost daily, since leaving America, and scarcely any other sea-birds, except in the immediate vicinity of the islands. It would seem that it scarcely ever visits the land, except for the purposes of incubation, and there can hardly be a better comment on its untiring power of wing than the popular fable amongst seamen that it carries its egg and hatches its young while sitting in the water. It does not sail in the continued manner of the gulls and some other sea-birds, but moves by rapidly flexing its wings something like a bat, and was continually coursing around and in the wake of the vessel, generally in considerable numbers, during much the greater part of the time that the Expedition was in the Atlantic Ocean.” The curious fact that this bird cannot stand upright we do not remember ever before having seen noticed. Of the specimen alluded to, Dr. Pickering gives notes of a minute and evidently very careful anatomical examination, which the limits of our present article will not allow us to insert. They are, however, confirmatory, in most respects, of the account of the anatomy of this species, given by Mr. Audubon, in Ornithological Biography, V., p. 645. The bird before the reader in the present plate is an inhabitant of the Northern Pacific Ocean, and is an interesting addition to the ornithological fauna of the United States, made by the naturalists of the Exploring Expedition, under command of Captain Charles Wilkes, to which we have previously alluded. Though long known as a bird of the coasts of Asiatic Russia and of Russian America, it had never before been noticed on the more southern coast of Oregon, where it was found in large numbers by the Expedition, and specimens then obtained are now in the National Museum at Washington.