GLAUCOUS GULL. 479 



the Fulmar Petrel, the Ivory Gull, or the Kitthvake. It 

 seldom alights in the water. When it rests on the ice, it 

 selects a hummock, and fixes itself on the highest pinnacle. 

 Sometimes it condescends to take a more humble situation 

 when it affords any advantage in procuring food. It is a 

 rapacious animal, and, when without other food, falls upon 

 the smaller species of birds and eats them. I have found the 

 bones of a small bird in its stomach, and have observed it in 

 pursuit of the Little Auk. Its eggs I have found on the 

 beach of Spitzbergen, deposited in the same way as those of 

 the Tern, namely, on the shingle, above high water mark, 

 where the full power of the sun falls." 



The remarks of Faber in reference to this species at Ice- 

 land, are, in substance, as follows : — This bird remains here 

 all the year, keeping the open sea in winter, and breeding in 

 summer on the rocks of the southern and western parts in 

 company with Larus marinus, which it resembles in some of 

 its habits, in its nest, and its eggs. It attacks small birds, 

 and robs their nests for food. It feeds also on Cancer pulex 

 and araneus ; extracts the soft animals from the shells of 

 Venus islandica, Pecten islandicus^ and searches closely for 

 the Lump-sucking fish, Ci/clopteriis lumpiis, which it appears 

 to delight in finding. 



The Glaucous Gull was found by our Arctic voyagers to 

 be numerous in Davis"* Straits, Baffin's Bay, Greenland, and 

 the Polar Seas ; occupying with their nests the pinnacles of 

 rocks and the projecting ledges of cliffs on the sea shore. 

 The egg is of a stone colour, spotted with ash-grey and two 

 shades of reddish-brown, and measures two inches nine lines 

 in length, by one inch and eleven lines in breadth. One 

 of these Gulls disgorged a Little Auk Avhen it was struck 

 by the shot, and proved on dissection to have a second in 

 its stomach. Captain James C. Ross mentions, that this 

 species was found at Felix Harbour, and along the line of 



