488 LARID.E. 



scapulars, tertials, and upper tail-coverts umber-brown, each 

 feather margined with wood-brown, these margins being 

 broadest on the tertials, the lower part of the back, and the 

 upper tail-coverts ; great wing-coverts nearly uniform umber- 

 brown ; wing-primaries blackish-brown, the shafts of these 

 feathers, and a considerable portion of the inner webs white ; 

 tail-feathers umber-brown, the two middle tail-feathers in this 

 young bird not more than half an inch longer than the next 

 feather on each side ; chin, throat, breast, belly, and vent 

 mottled with bufF-coloured brown, produced by narrow alter- 

 nate transverse lines of clove-brown and wood-brown ; under 

 tail-coverts broadly barred across mih umber-brown and 

 wood-brown ; legs and base of the toes yellow, anterior part 

 of the toes and their intervening membranes black. 



O 



The whole length of this bird to the end of the tail-feathers 

 next the central pair, twenty inches ; wing from the anterior 

 bend fourteen inches and a quarter. The comparative mea- 

 surements in an adult bird would be twenty-one inches, and 

 fifteen inches. I have seen a specimen of the Pomarine 

 Skua in the collection of Mr. Bond, which was obtained alive 

 when a young bird in the varied plumage of its first year, 

 which assumed the uniform chocolate brown plumage during 

 its second year ; some specimens barred across the breast 

 have been named Lestris striatns, as noticed by Mr. Eyton ; 

 and I have seen two fine old birds, dove-grey on the back, 

 with the head black, the neck all round and the breast yellow- 

 ish-white, with the central tail-feathers elongated, showing 

 that the Pomarine Skua is subject to all the changes of 

 plumage which have been so frequently observed in the more 

 common species next to be described, and of which three 

 representations are given as illustrations. 



The name of Skua is considered to have been adopted 

 from the note of the bird, which sounds like shii. 



