388 LARIDAt 
a century this fine colony ceased to exist. Parts of the 
Wexford! coast may also be mentioned where this bird 
bred plentifully over fifty years ago (Ussher). 
The summer visits of the Roseate Tern to our shores 
appear to be of shorter duration than those of other species, 
not that the bird arrives so much later, but that it departs 
earlier, in fact, directly the young can fly. It is seldom 
seen on our coasts after August. 
This species is so called on account of the beautiful 
though evanescent pink tint of its breast-feathers, which 
fades soon after death, so that in dry skins it is not dis- 
cernible. This delicate tint 1s not peculiar to the Roseate 
Tern, though more pronounced in this than in other species. 
A splendid pair of Sandwich Terns, which I had the pleasure 
of mounting, exhibited in a less degree, a warm rosy glow 
under the surface of the breast-feathers. Black-headed 
Gulls and several others are similarly tinted about the 
breast in the adult nuptial plumage. 
Flight.—No Tern is more graceful than the Roseate on 
the wing. Its more slender form, longer forked tail so 
well displayed as it poises in the air, the more rapid strokes 
of its pointed pinions, are characteristics by which it can be 
distinguished from its larger and more sturdy congeners. 
Food.—This bird is almost exclusively marine in its 
habits and lives chiefly on small surface-feeding fish. 
Ornaments for hats! Can such appeal to those of us who have watched 
with delight, not only the graceful movements, but also the elegant 
form of these birds in life? Look at the plumage in a state of nature 
with each feather in its own place, perfectly smooth and unruffled, 
and at the beautiful tints of the breast, the legs, the beak, tints which 
fade when life is taken. Can the soft expression of eye, with humid 
lids, be reproduced as in life? Compare the living bird with the 
stuffed skin which, with ruffled and often broken quills, is skewered 
and twisted out of shape, almost beyond recognition, to fit the head- 
garb which it is supposed to bedeck. Observe the glass eyes! Un- 
natural in colour and glaring in expression, with not even a vestige of 
dry skin to represent the lids which lie shrunken far back in the orbits. 
In short, what an effigy of its former self is thus represented, and 
yet wearers exult in its fancied beauty! Happily, however, there are 
many bird-lovers who can view those so called ‘ornaments’ only with 
utter distaste. Happily, too, much good is being done by the Societies 
for the Protection of Birds, in both Great Britain and Ireland, to prevent 
this wanton destruction of birds for useless, even for grim purposes. 
' On April 30th, 1897, Mr. Barrington received a male from Hook - 
Tower Lighthouse, co. Wexford, which was killed when striking (‘ Migra- 
tion of Birds’). 
