42 Dwight, The White-winged Gulls. [f£f 



British Museum, another male from St. Michaels in the Acad. 

 Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia (No. 37692, St. Michaels, Alaska, d" 

 Sept. 5, 1897) and recently a fourth (Mus. Carnegie Inst. No. 

 7729, 9 , San Geronimo I., Lower California, March 18, 1897) 

 which is apparently a nearly adult female has been taken at a 

 surprisingly southern locality. I have examined all of these four 

 birds and find that the type, the specimen in the British Museum, 

 and the bird in the Philadelphia Academy are very similar, and 

 the pattern of the primaries corresponds very nearly to the type 

 specimen of kumlieni, the outer webs being slaty or brownish 

 but the terminal bands much less distinct. The Carnegie speci- 

 men, on the other hand, is nearly the counterpart of the U. S. Nat. 

 Mus. specimen of kumlieni (No. 161845) described above; there 

 is no banding, but merely dusky outer webs of the primaries. 

 Doubtless in time other specimens will be obtained, but judging 

 from the few extant, nelsoni seems to have as good a claim for 

 specific distinctness as does kumlieni, of which it appears to be a 

 large edition. It is a species about the size of glaucus and as 

 much larger than kumlieni, 16 °/o, as glaucus is larger than leucop- 

 terus. The bill, however, seems to be only about 24 % larger, 

 but with tarsi and toes relatively very large. 



The young bird has never been described, but inasmuch as 

 kumlieni in juvenal plumage is scarcely to be distinguished from 

 glaucescens, there is every reason for expecting the corresponding 

 plumage of nelsoni to be practically the same. The birds, though, 

 ought to be larger than glaucescens and I have no doubt that very 

 large specimens now labelled 'glaucescens' in various collections 

 will eventually prove to be nelsoni. Such a bird has been recorded 

 in the British Museum Catalogue, but somehow I overlooked it 

 when examining the collection. In the American Museum, how- 

 ever, I find two specimens (Nos. 26234 and 61536) so much larger 

 than glaucescens usually is that I believe them to be nelsoni. The 

 tarsi and feet are unusually large and massive and the bills very 

 heavy. The bird in the Philadelphia Academy is completing 

 an adult postnuptial moult, but the other specimens throw very 

 little light on the subject of moult in this species. 



While I may not have been entirely successful in untangling the 

 confusing multitude of so-called immature plumages in these spe- 



