111.] 



THE IVORY GULL. 



93 



coast of Novaya Zemlya and America, its nest has only been 

 found twice, once in 1853 by McClintock at Cape Krabbe 

 in North America in 77° 25' N.L., the second time by Dr. 

 Mahn^Ten at Murchison Bay, in 82° 2' N.L. The two nests 

 that Mahngren found consisted of depressions, twenty-three 

 to twenty-six centimetres in diameter, in a hea,p of loose gravel, 

 on a ledge" of a steeply-sloping limestone-rock wall. In each 

 nest was found only one egg, which, on the 80th July, already 

 contained a down-covered young bird. For all the ivory gulls 

 which have their home on Spitzbergen there were doubtless 

 required several hundred such breeding-places as that at 

 Murchison Bay. When to this is added the fact that we never 



RARE NORTHERN GULLS. 



A. Sabine's Gull. {Larus Sahiiiii, Sabine.) b. Ross's Gull (Lnrus Rossii, Richards.) 



ill autumn saw on Spitzbergen any full-grown young of this 

 kind of gull, I assume that its proper breeding-place must be 

 found farther north, on the shores of some still unknown Polar 

 land, perhaps continually surrounded by ice. It deserves to 

 be mentioned with reference to this, that Murchison Bay was 

 covered with ice when Mahngren found the nests referred to 

 above. 



Besides these varieties of the gull, two other species have 

 been found, though very rarely, in the Polar regions, viz., 

 Lams Sahinil, Salaine, and Larus Rossii, Richards. Although 

 I have myself only seen the latter, and that but once (on the 

 Chukchi Peninsula), I hero give drawings of them both for 



