NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 275 



The remaining four species are better known to British 

 ornithologists; S. catarrhactes, the Common or Great Skua, and S. 

 crepidatus, Richardson's Skua, being still found breeding, although, 

 especially the former, in greatly decreasing numbers, on some of 

 our Scottish islands; and the other two, S. piarasiticns, Buffon's 

 Skua, and S. pomatorhinus, the Pomatorhine Skua, being found 

 as regular stragglers to our shores. I shall, therefore, confine my 

 remarks on the present occasion more particularly to the last men- 

 tioned species, whose recent appearance on our coasts forms the 

 subject of the present paper. I may, however, draw the attention 

 of those interested in the distribution of the genus to an exhaustive 

 monograph on the subject by Mr. Howard Saunders, in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Zoological Society of London for the year 1876, 

 p. 320, and to which I am indebted for valuable assistance on the 

 present occasion. 



Stercorarius pomatorhinus, the Pomatorhine Skua (sometimes 

 spelt Pomarine, but as Mr. Sclater has shown in the Ibis for 1867, 

 the former is more classical, being derived from Trw/xa, operculum, 

 and ptv, nasus), is a native of the arctic seas, where it has been 

 observed as far north as lat. 82° N. It is found on the coasts of 

 Spitzbergen, Novaya Zemlya, and along the northern coasts of 

 Ptussia and Siberia. Middendorf found it breeding in the "barrens" 

 of the latter. Newton also records it as breeding in Greenland. 

 Besides these, Mr. Saunders considers there must be many other 

 breeding places, for it is numerous in the north, and on our own 

 shores it is not very uncommon in the autumn. It extends in 

 winter all along the western coasts of Europe and Africa, ascending 

 the Mediterranean as far as Sicily and Malta.* It has been 

 obtained on the Burmese coast and at Cape York, North Australia. 

 It occurs on the North American shore of the Atlantic as far 

 south as New York, and has been seen at the Prybilov islands on 

 the west coast of that continent, while an adult specimen was 

 obtained off the Japanese coast in May, 1875, by the Challenger 

 Expedition (Saunders, P.Z.S., 1877, p. 794). It is only in small 

 numbers that it usually visits our shores, but it is quite well known 

 in the Frith of Forth and other places along the eastern coasts of 

 Great Britain. Although, like the other species, it is more frequently 



* I observed in the spring of the present year, 1880, several specimens, 

 both adult and young, in the Museum of Marseilles, all of which were 

 obtained in that neighbourhood. 



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