SOOTY TERN. 563 



On the Continent, this inter-tropical species has been 

 noticed on three occasions. Naumann states that one was 

 obtained near Magdeburg ; Degland and Gerbe mention an 

 adult male, now in the Lille Museum, taken alive but 

 exhausted, near Verdun, on the 15th of June, 1854 ; and 

 one, now in the Museum at Florence, was captured on the 

 28th October, 1862, in a net set for trout in a torrent in 

 Piedmont (Ibis, 1881, p. 218). 



The Sooty Tern has been known to occur about a dozen 

 times so far north as the New England States, but it is only 

 on the warmer portions of the American coast that it 

 becomes in any way abundant. It breeds on the Bahamas ; 

 and on many of the Cays off the coast of Florida, especially 

 the Tortugas, and Audubon has given a graphic description 

 of the swarms he found there. Other breeding-places are 

 scattered amongst the West Indian Islands ; and in the 

 Pacific the species appears to go as far south as Chili, and to 

 straggle as far north as Japan and the Aleutian Islands. Its 

 range extends throughout Polynesia — where suitable breed- 

 ing localities are numerous — to the coasts of Australia, along 

 which it is of general distribution ; Gilbert found it breeding 

 on Houtman's Abrolhos in December, Macgillivray obtained 

 eggs in Torres Straits in May and June ; and Piaine's Island 

 in the Great Barrier Pieef is another well-known station. It 

 occurs throughout the Eastern Archipelago ; visits the coasts 

 of India and Ceylon ; and Mr. Hume found it breeding in the 

 Laccadives in the middle of February, by which date most 

 of the eggs were hatched. It is generally distributed through- 

 out the Indian Ocean, from Madagascar and the neighbouring 

 islands to the east coast of Africa and the Mekran shores, 

 and it has several breeding-places in the Red Sea. On 

 the western side of Africa it breeds in limited numbers at 

 St. Helena, but the best known, and probably the largest 

 assemblage, is the one which takes place at different seasons 

 in the Island of Ascension. Dr. C. Collingwood (Zool. s.s. 

 p. 979), and the late Commander Rowland M. Sperling 

 (Ibis, 18G8, p. 268), have given excellent accounts of their 

 visits to the ' Wide-awake Fairs,' as the colonies are called. 



