LARUS PHILADELPHIA, BONAPARTE's GULL. 657 



The specimen examined was shot while feeding, and the whole digestive apparatus 

 was in full play. (Esophagus measures between six and seven inches in length, pre- 

 senting the usual characteristics of muscularity and dilatability. It was contracted 

 and longitudinally plicate to within an inch of the proveutriculns, where it was dis- 

 tended with an enormous wad of coleopterous and bymenopterous insects ; this ]iart of 

 the canal being, of course, devoid of rugje, and its walls thin and tense. The difference 

 in appearance of the proventricular portion of the tube was very marked. Its color 

 was gray ; the mucous memhrane soft velvety to the touch, without rugse, marked 

 everywhere with thickly aggregated puucta. The solvent follicles were counted, and 

 found to amount to 1,643. The gastric zone was 0.6 broad. The insects in this portion 

 of the canal were in a perfect state of integrity, as in the cenophagus, but were much 

 softened. Gizzard of jjroportiouate size, and with the general characteristics of the 

 LarincE. 



Intestine 24 inches from pylorus to anus. Besides the ordinary duodenal fold, there 

 is another which commences 4 or 5 inches from the cceca, and runs up behind the giz- 

 zard as high as the asophagus, and then descends in a pretty straight line to the coeca. 

 The cceca are hardly 0.12 long, but are bioad and capacious, with rounded free extrem- 

 ities. They lie closely apposed to the gut, 0.75 of an inch fioui the cloaca. Cloaca, as 

 usual, large, capacious, globular. Its posterior division is small, but nuirked by 

 a well-developed ridge of mucous membrane. Orihccs of urinary and seminal ducts 

 in the usual position. 



Lobes of liver of nearly equal size, 1.75 inches long; the right is a little the most 

 attenuated, left the thickest. They are connected by a broad, thin band of glandular 

 substance. 



Kidneys chiefly divided into three lobes, of which the superior is the largest and 

 most convex ; the inferior smallest ; the central connectiug lobe irregular in outline. 



Trachea 4 inches long, flattened above, tapering and cylindrical below ; its rings 

 weak and cartilaginous, numbering about 120. The sterno-trachealis inserted only 0.3- 

 above the lower larynx. A single pair of inferior laryngeal inserted into the first 

 bronchial half ring. Bronchial rings abut 22. 



Very numerous specimens of this species now before me exhibit little variation in 

 colors other than those dependent on age and season ; though, as will be seen from the 

 preceding paragraphs, its normal changes of plumage are very great. The ditierences 

 are chieliy in the amount of the narrow edging of the black of the tips of the prima- 

 ries, which runs along to their bases ; in the amount of black on the seventh and eighth 

 primaries ; and in the size of the white apices of all of them. The diti'erence in size 

 is more notalile; the specimens being marked according to collectors' measurements 

 as from 12 to 14.50 in total length, though 1 think that so great a discrepancy may be 

 accounted for by supposing slightly different methods of measurement, and errors of 

 carelessness and otherwise. I have never seen a specimen so large as is indicated by 

 Richardson, viz, 15.60 inches. The bills difler somewhat in stoutness ; in the young 

 they are always slenderer and weaker. The notch toward the extremities of the tomia 

 is always (juite distinct. 



By both Audubon and Bonaparte the female of the present species is said to have a 

 brow n instead of a black head ; and Audubon's plate shows an entirely difiercnt color 

 of the hood of the female from that of the male. This statement is at variance w ith 

 Richardson's account and with the experience of authors, except those two above 

 mentioned, which has invariably shown the hoods of the two sexes to be colored alike. 

 I have never seen any brown-headed examides; and as the species is so abundant that 

 the diflerence, if it really existed, would have been readily detected, I think if is sale to 

 as.sert that it does not. 8till it is dillicult to see how both Audubon and Bonai)artefelI 

 into such an error, and I can ofl'er no explanation of the matter. 



JiihUoijntphii. — The first specilic name of this species is, as proven by Mr. Lawrence,. 

 j)hUad(lj>hia of Ord. "The shinder and tern-like form of the bill probably induced Mr. 

 Ord to put it in Sterna." Until the name of Mr. Ord's was revived by Mr. Lawrence, 

 the species almost universally received the apitellation of honajxo-tri, impost-d upon it 

 by Richardson in IHIU. It was referred to the genus Clinrcocvplialus, by Binili, in 1(^55. 

 ]}onaparte in his American Ornithology, aixl in his Syn(i]>sis of l-2f^, before the intro- 

 duction lit Richardson's specilic nanu-, referred tiie biid \ cry eironi-ou.sly to tlie cajiiii- 

 tiatun of Ttniminck. which is (piite another thing. In bis sulis* (pient worUs he adopts 

 the nauui bestowed in Iioiku- of himself, referring the liird to the genera Xaiia and 

 Gar'ta. I (juote ^' Luiuh nulauuru.s Ord" as a synonym of the young, <m the aulliority 

 of Bonajiarte. The Lams vuldtior/n/iHlinx of Tenniiinck is, l)y Dr. Schlegcl, considered 

 as referring to this species. By other authors it is placed as a syminym of "iuciillatiis." 

 L. snbuliroslrix may belong here rather tlian to fninLlini. 



No one of our s])ecies is more widely di.spersed tlian tlii.s. (lo wliere 



Ave inny in Nortli Amfricit, tiic inctty l)ii(l in;i_\ be .seen iit oim' of another 



sea.soii, if we arc not too lar Iroin any eonsidcrabh' body of waltT. The 



Gull hold.s its own from the Labrador erags, ajjainst which the waves of 



42 



