The White Phase of Plumage in the Iceland Gidl. 167 



the Wernerian Society the first occurrence of this bird in 

 Britain, describing as a new species, under the name Larus 

 islandicus, or Lesser Iceland Gull, specimens obtained in 

 Shetland (Me7n. Wern. Soc., iv. p. 506). Mr Edmonston's 

 name, however, is one year younger than that of Faber. 



In connection with the distribution of the Iceland and 

 other Arctic Gulls, it would be interesting to know what 

 species was found breeding at one of the North Georgian 

 (Parry) Islands, and referred by Sabine to his Arctic race of 

 the Herring Gull {Larus argentatiis) (see footnote, p. 164). 

 A year after accompanying Captain John Eoss to Davis 

 Strait, Sabine sailed under Parry, in the capacity, among 

 others, of zoologist, on that distinguished explorer's first 

 North-West Expedition, and published in the Appendix to 

 that voyage, in 1824, an account of the mammals and birds 

 observed in the regions visited. At page cciv. of this 

 Appendix, Sabine, who, as we have seen, really discovered 

 the Iceland Gull one year, or, perhaps, two years before, 

 tells us that both the Greenland variety of the Herring Gull 

 ( = the Iceland Gull), without the black marking on the 

 primary quills, and one individual of the common form of 

 Herring Gull, were observed on one of the North Georgian 

 Islands, where a number of the former had their nests on a 

 cliff. I have been unable to trace this record in the 

 synonymy and copious references to literature quoted by 

 Mr Howard Saunders in his standard monograph of the 

 Gavi«("Brit. Mus. Cat. Birds," 1896); though from the 

 days of Kichardson and Swainson in 1831 ("Fauna Boreali 

 Americana," Birds, p. 418), down to the present decade, it 

 has been included in the synonymy of, or regarded as the 

 Iceland Gull in all important ornithological works. 



