V °iS99 VI ] MuRDOCH » A Historical Notice of Ross's Rosy Gull 153 



drawbacks. The carpenter's shop, "where I had to work, would 

 not warm up in spite of the little Sibley stove in it, and by the 

 time I had a skin turned inside out and the skull cleaned, the 

 skin would be so stiff from freezing that it would not turn back, 

 and I used to have to warm it at the stove before I could finish 

 the skin Besides the metal top, which our commanding officer 

 thought was such a neat and cleanly thing to put on my skinning 

 table, used to become uncomfortably numbing to the fingers. 



One would naturally suppose that some enterprising collector 

 would have visited Point Barrow after we left, and that a constant 

 supply of these birds would have reached museums, but as a 

 matter of fact, I have seen no published record of any specimens 

 from that region later than our own. I have been informed, 

 however, that there are one or two skins in San Francisco, which 

 I have reason to believe were smuggled in by an unscrupulous 

 member of our party, who appropriated birds which he had shot, 

 though of course, everything collected by any member of the 

 expedition was Government property. 



Nor have any large numbers of the species since been col- 

 lected anywhere else, but specimens continue to come in as 

 stragglers just as they did before our great 'strike.' Before 

 our collections reached the museum, there had already been 

 received the three battered skins that Mr. Newcomb, the natu- 

 ralist of the ' Jeannette,' so pluckily brought out in that desper- 

 ate retreat across the ice, after the wreck, when they abandoned 

 everything that they could possibly dispense with. They had 

 secured seven birds, but brought out only the three showing the 

 most interesting stages of plumage. These birds were all taken 

 while the ship was beset north of Wrangel Island, in October, 

 1879, and the latter part of June, 1880. During the march 

 across the ice, they saw several, early in July, 1881, just north 

 of Bennett Island (De Long, Voyage of the Jeannette, passim) . 



No more captures were reported until Dr. Alexander Bunge, 

 a Russian naturalist, secured two in the Lena Delta, on July 8, 

 1883 (Melanges biologiques, Vol. XII, pt. 1, p. 57). The 

 Yakuts told him that it was very rare. The next bird was taken 

 at Disco on June 15, 1885. It was said to have been shot at 

 the nest, and an egg was sent^with it by the collector. (Reported 





