SHEARWATER, the name of a bird first published in Willughby's Ornithologia (p. 252), as made known to him by Sir T. Browne, who sent a picture of it with an account that is given more fully in Ray's translation of that work (p. 334), stating that it is "a Sea-fowl, which fishermen observe to resort to their Vessels in some numbers, swimming). swiftly to and fro, backward, forward, and about them, and Both as it were radere aquam, shear the water, from whence perhaps it had its name."2 Ray's mistaking young birds of this kind obtained in the Isle of Man for the young of the Coulterneb, now usually called PUFFIN, has already been mentioned under that heading (vol. xx. p. 102); and not only has his name Pujinus anglorum hence become attached to this species, commonly described in English books as the Manx Puffin or Manx Shearwater, but the barbarous and misapplied word Pujinus has come into regular use as the generic term for all birds thereto allied, forming a well-marked group of the Family Procellariidu (cf. PETREL, vol. xviii. p. 711), distinguished chiefly by their elongated bill, and numbering some twenty species, if not more - the discrimination of which, owing partly to the general similarity of some of them, and partly to the change of plumage which others through age are believed to undergo, has taxed in no common degree the ingenuity of those ornithologists who have ventured on the difficult task of determining their characters. Shear-waters are found in nearly all the seas and oceans of the world,3 generally within no great distance from the land, though rarely resorting thereto, except in the breeding-season. But they also penetrate to waters which may be termed inland, as the Bosphorus, where they have long attracted attention by their daily passage up and down the strait, in numerous flocks, hardly ever alighting on the surface, and from this restless habit they are known to the French-speaking part of the population as rimes damnees, it being held by the Turks that they are animated by condemned human souls. Four species of Pujinus are recorded as visiting the coasts of the United Kingdom; but the Manx Shearwater aforesaid is the only one that at all commonly occurs or breeds in the British Islands. It is a very plain-looking bird, black above and white beneath, and about the size of a Pigeon. Some other species are considerably larger, while some are smaller, and of the former several are almost whole-coloured, being of a sooty or dark cinereous hue both above and below. All over the world Shearwaters seem to have precisely the same habits, laying their single purely white egg in a hole under ground. The young are thickly clothed with long down, and are extremely fat. In this condition they are thought to be good eating, and enormous numbers are caught for this purpose in some localities, especially of a species, the P. brevicaudtts of Gould, which frequents the islands off the coast of Australia, where it is commonly known as the "Mutton-bird." For works treating of the Shearwaters, see those cited under PETREL (vol. xviii. p. 712). (A. N.)