( 360 ) 



THE LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL OF THE 

 BRITISH ISLANDS. 



BY 



TOM IREDALE. 



In the first number of this volume of British Birds 

 (pp. 2-7, Plate 1) Dr. P. R. Lowe showed that the bu-d 

 known in the British Isles as the Lesser Black-backed 

 Gull did not deserve this name, as the coloration of 

 the back was in no sense black : at the same time he 

 pointed out that the form called by Linne Larus fuscus, 

 more appropriately answered to that name. As the 

 British form seemed weU-differentiated he named it 

 Larus fuscus hritannicus, no previous writer having fixed 

 the pale form though many claim to have recognised 

 the differences. The justice of Dr. Lowe's action is 

 now made more apparent, as it has caused the recognition 

 of an earlier misapplied name and cleared up an anomaly 

 in a most satisfactory manner. 



In a paper on the Birds of Greenland published in the 

 Vidensk. Meddel {Kjoh7i.), p. 78, Dr. Reinhardt described 

 a Gull under the name Larus affinis. As it was a soUtary 

 specimen, Reinhardt was unable to fix definitely its 

 relationship and compared it with L. argentatus, noting 

 it was much darker than that species but appeared to 

 be a variety : he concluded that it agreed somewhat 

 with the description of Audubon's Larus occidentalism 

 but that species was larger than L. argentatus whilst 

 L. affinis was smaller. A digest of this paper appeared 

 in the Ihis for 1861, and reading this I was struck by the 

 statement regarding the size of L. affinis. Wlien Saunders 

 wrote his " Revision of the Gulls " in the Proceedings of 

 the Zoological Society for 1878, he used Reinhardt's name 

 for a large Gull which had been recently procured in 

 Siberia. He examined Reinhardt's type and noted the 

 agreement in coloration, but ignored the discrepancy in 

 size, for whereas Reinhardt stated that his bird was 

 less than L. argentatus the bird Saunders called L. affinis is 

 much larger. 



