PEDIGREES AND FAMILY TIES. 217 



terns are very close allies of the plovers. They 

 are younger scions of the same stock. The 

 difference in the colouration of the plumage of 

 the young and adult plover is slight, or non- 

 existent. The difference between the nestling 

 gull and the adult is very marked. Like the 

 more ancient plovers, the young gulls are clothed 

 in a brown livery ; in some, as in the common 

 black-headed gull, so frequently seen even near 

 London Bridge, this gives place to the familiar 

 pure white and pearl-grey after the first moult; 

 in others, as the great black-backed gull, it takes 

 three years to gain the adult dress. In the 

 little black-headed gull, both male and female, 

 don each spring a sooty black hood, which is lost 

 directly the breeding-season has passed ; but the 

 black-backed gull has no seasonal change of 

 plumage. 



The auks, razor-bills, and puffins of our coasts 

 have been most persistently thrust in amongst 

 the grebes and divers, and labelled as their 

 cousins. This was done merely on the strength 

 of a superficial resemblance, which doubtless 

 exists ; but those whose business it is to do the 

 work of the heralds' college, and search the records 

 of the past, are now in a position to demonstrate 

 the falsity of such a view, and careful dissection 

 of these birds has proved beyond cavil that they 

 stand very near indeed to the plovers. 



It is not so easy to say which are really the 

 nearest relatives of the pigeons and sand-grouse. 

 Some place them near the game-birds, and some 

 regard them as the latest descendants of the 

 plover-tribe. Their pedigree has yet to be 



