630 LARlDiE. 



a yellowish tinge. This species takes three years in arriving 

 at its adult plumage, and breeds when all but four years old. 

 The young in down are similar to those of the Herring Gull. 



In confinement a female Lesser Black-backed Gull has 

 been known to pair with a male Herring Gull, and on the 

 offspring of this union Mr. Cecil Smith writes as follows: — 



" The hybrid between these two Gulls mentioned by me 

 at p. 450 of ' The Zoologist ' for 1881* as having been bred 

 in my pond in May, 1880, and allowed to fly, has from that 

 time to the present paid me frequent visits, sometimes stay- 

 ing for two or three days together, sometimes leaving im- 

 mediately after feeding-time, and sometimes not making its 

 appearance for wrecks together. It has now so nearly reached 

 its adult plumage that I think it worth while to give a short 

 description of it, as I have lately had a good many oppor- 

 tunities of looking at it, and am always afraid each visit may 

 be its last, as it might meet with an accident on one of its 

 journeys to and from the Bristol Channel, though as a rule 

 it flies very high and quite out of shot. The wing-coverts 

 and mantle appear now to have assumed their fully adult 

 colouring, there being none of the brown markings of the 

 immature plumage left. The quills, however, are not those 

 of the adult bird, though I should think after another moult 

 they, as well as the tail-feathers, which still have a few brown 

 markings left, would be so. The wing- coverts and mantle 

 are very pale indeed for a Black-back, though much too 

 dark for a Herring Gull. The legs are flesh-colour, like 

 the Herring Gull, if anything a little brighter and more 

 highly coloured, now showing no sign of the yellow of the 

 Lesser Black-back. Any one shooting it and describing it 

 might say it was a pale Lesser Black-back with the legs 

 and feet coloured like those of a Herring Gull, but I do not 

 think any one would speak of it as a dark Herring Gull" 

 (Zool. 1883, p. 174). This bird was shot in the following 

 May, and preserved. 



Owing to tbe inversion of a figure, the year in which tbe Lesser Black- 

 backed Gull was taken from the nest was printed 1879 instead of 1876. If not 

 corrected, it would appear that this species had hred in its first year. 



