I46 Murdoch, A Historical Notice of Ross's Rosy Gull. \_t^\ 



Each may do something of value while studying in a new way the 

 familiar problems of bird life. The writer hopes simply to en- 

 courage others to work along a line which has been of so much 

 interest to him and which seems so full of new material. 



A HISTORICAL NOTICE OF ROSS'S ROSY GULL 

 {RHOD OSTE THIA R OSEA ) . 1 



BY JOHN MURDOCH. 



As I am one of the very few naturalists who ever had the good 

 fortune to collect more than a few straggling individuals of this 

 beautiful and still rare Gull, or, indeed, to see the bird in any- 

 thing like large numbers, I have always felt a great interest in the 

 species. The bird, indeed, should be of interest to all naturalists, 

 for although it has been known to science for seventy-five years, 

 and although I have seen literally thousands of them on the wing, 

 there are still not more than no specimens known to be in exist- 

 ence in collections, and most of these have been procured since 

 1880. The great difference between the actual numbers of the 

 bird and its representation in collections is plainly due to some 

 remarkable peculiarity in its habits and geographical distribution. 

 I hope to show what this peculiarity is in the present paper, in 

 which I have tried to present all that we know of the history of 

 the species. 



The bird, of course, is well known to ornithologists, but as all 

 my hearers are not ornithologists, it will be well to describe it 

 briefly before going on to give an account of its discovery. It is 

 a graceful little Gull about the size of a Pigeon, and not unlike 

 the little Bonaparte's Gull which is so common along our coast. 

 It is, however, strikingly different from all other Gulls in two 

 important particulars. In the first place, it is the only Gull 



1 Read before Section F, American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, August 28, 1898. 



