CASPIAN TERN. 539 



Young birds of the year, before their first autumu moult, 

 have the beak of a dull red, horn-coloured at the point ; the 

 forehead and top of the head white ; the upper surface of 

 the body varied with patches of ash-brown, and darker 

 transverse bands ; the feathers of the tail have dark ends ; 

 the primary quill-feathers are also dark ; all the under surface 

 of the body pure white. 



The downy nestling about a week old, for which the Editor 

 is indebted to Mr. E. Bidwell, is of a dull white mottled 

 with grey, and the newly-sprouting feathers on the wings 

 are buff-tinted ; bill and feet yellow. 



The Swift Tern, Sterna hcrgii, Lichtenstein, was recorded 

 by Thompson (Ann. N. H. xx. p. 170), under the name of 

 *S'. velo.v, Ptiipp., as having been shot at the end of December, 

 1846, between Dublin and Howth, The specimen, which 

 was in full breeding-plumage, became the property of the 

 late Mr. Watters, and was undoubtedly the species it was 

 said to be. Information obtained by the Editor when in 

 Dublin, from several sources, but especially from the late 

 Mr. R. J. Montgomery, so often mentioned in Thompson's 

 ' Birds of Ireland,' left no doubt that the introduction of 

 this species began with the temptation to play a practical 

 joke, afforded by an imperfectly-skinned foreign specimen, 

 purchased with others by a young taxidermist. The limits 

 of humour were passed when the perpetrator had not the 

 moral courage to refuse the reward pressed upon him, and 

 details, which will not bear investigation, were invented to 

 substantiate the original statement. The Swift Tern is a 

 large intertropical species which has never been known to 

 straggle to any part of Europe, nor even to the north coast 

 of Africa west of Lower Egypt. Major E. A. Butler found 

 it breeding on the island of Astolah, off the coast of Baluch- 

 istan (Stray Feathers, 1877, p. 298). This species has the 

 mantle and tail of a slate-grey, and in breeding-plumage 

 the black crown is separated from the bill by a broad white 

 frontlet. 



