Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 157 



upon small fishes, which they carried off, after making many 

 cries like haack, haack, and slowly wheeling into the air. 



In the stomach of five Skuas that have been examined 

 were found remains of the following fishes — Cottus gobio, 

 Esox lucius, and Gobio fluviatUis, and in two specimens also 

 remains of worms ; not a strange thing, because one knows 

 that Seebohm noticed that some specimens obtained by him 

 had been feeding upon beetles and cranberries, so that the 

 food of this bird is very varied. 



The specimens of which I am speaking all belong to 

 Stei'corarius jiarasiticus (Linn.), or Buffon's Skua; they are 

 young birds of the year, some of a nearly sooty brown, less 

 dark on the underparts, lightly striated on the flanks and. tail- 

 coverts ; some are, however, whitish towards the belly and 

 vent. Regarding the shafts of the primaries, they have only 

 the two outer ones on each side white and the others dark, 

 while in the S. crepidatiis, or Richardson^s Skua, all the 

 shafts are white-coloured ; besides, as Col. Irby rightly 

 observes, the nostrils of Buffon's Skua are nearer the frontal 

 feathers than the tip of the bill, the contrary being the case 

 in Richardson's Skua. Finally our specimens are less in 

 stature and darker than Richardson's Skuas. 



Regarding the geographical distribution of the Stercnrarii 

 in Italy, I can say that the species which more or less rarely 

 occur in our region are four, viz. : — ■ 



{a) Stercorarius catarrhactes, or Great Skua, which is the 

 rarest, only one specimen being known, which is preserved 

 in the Museum of Florence, obtained in the Province of 

 Verona, October 1882. 



(6) Stercorariuspomato)'h'mus, or Pomatorhine Skua, which 

 is uncommon; though widely distributed in Italy; it is gene- 

 rally killed in summer and autumn, less frequently in winter, 

 and the specimens are usually young. I have in my collec- 

 tion two young and an adult female. 



(c) Stercorarius crepidatus, or Richardson^s Skua, a rare 

 species, perhaps rarer than S. pomatorhinus and S. para- 

 siticus-, however, it has been killed in many parts of Italy 

 and in every season, but, if my information is right, in the 



