63 
BUONAPARTE’S GULL. 
BUONAPAKTIAN GULL. 
Larus Buonapartii, 
Thompson. Audubon. 
Larus —.? Buonapartii — Of Buonaparte. 
If I was writing a history of France, or rather a history 
of the World, instead of a History of British Birds, I might 
here enlarge, were my pen able to do equal justice to the 
subject with the pencil of Landseer, on the contrast between 
‘Peace’ and ‘War,’ the name of Buonaparte suggesting to the 
eye of the mind a picture, which not even the touch of that 
greatest of painters, ancient or modern, can equally convey to 
it. Whether ‘True Greatness’ is most and best exhibited in 
the life of the Prince, or in that of the Emperor, in the man 
of science, or the man of the sword, whether the study of 
all God’s creatures for one’s own instruction and that of others, 
or the wholesale destruction of the last-made and best of 
them all, for the sake of self alone, is most for the glory of 
G-od or the good of man, I hope, I know, that even my 
writings have largely assisted to spread in my country a right 
spirit, which will enable many to return the true answer to 
the question, and to make it tell so far with practical effect. 
The present species, named after the Prince of Canino, 
Charles Lucien Buonaparte, the eminent naturalist, has in 
America been noticed in different parts of the Union, and 
throughout the Fur Countries in abundance, in Chesapeake 
Bay, Passamaquody Harbour, Charleston Harbour, and about 
the Great Slave Lake. 
In Scotland, a specimen was shot by Sir George H. Leith, 
on the shore of Loch Lomond, in Dumbartonshire, the end 
of April, 1850. 
