WHITE-WINGED GULL. 573 



native islands, and unacquainted with tlie literature of natural 

 history, should, previously to his own observations, have been 

 aware of those of others ; and, as far as he was concerned, 

 they were therefore known and described for the first time. 

 It is easy now to give them names, and talk of them as 

 species that had always been familiarly known, but such 

 was not the case previous to 1814; and if, after all, I am 

 still not to be considered as having discovered one of these 

 species, I still must insist that I possess the humble honour 

 of restoring them to their specific rank, though this in orni- 

 thological heraldry be decided to be only a civic (Burgomaster) 

 one. It is yet, however, to be proved whether the names 

 Burgomaster and Wagel Avere not by many writers applied 

 indiscriminately to the young of all the larger Gulls ; thus 

 committing the double error of exalting a young bird of a 

 known species into a new species, and of confounding the 

 young of the one species with that of another ; nor does it 

 appear that other trivial names, such as Glaucus, &c., were 

 more accurately or regularly applied. In the Ferroe Isles it 

 is known by a similar name, Uislands Mauge, that is, Iceland 

 Gull, as it is here. It is there, also, only a winter visitant. 

 Why it has received this name from the inhabitants of these 

 two groups I know not, for it does not occur very numerously, 

 nor does it, I believe, breed in Iceland. In the high rocky 

 cliffs in Davis' Straits it is found in great numbers, and 

 the nest generally contains three young. They are, I think, 

 easily domesticated, more so than any others of the large 

 Gulls. The instinct that leads the Greater and Lesser Black- 

 backed and Herring Gulls to constitute themselves, pro 

 tempore, the coast-guard against sportsmen, I have observed 

 no traces of in them." 



No one acquainted with Gulls can have any hesitation in 

 according to Dr. Edmondston all the merit of having made 

 us acquainted with these two species ; nor can it, on the other 

 hand, be denied that one of them, the larger, was well 

 described before his first paper on it made its appearance. 

 The smaller species he may lay claim to, but even it has also 

 been distinguished by one Avho has taken precedence. The 

 comparative terms Greater and Lesser, applied to Wood- 



