142 Letters, Extracts, Notices, S^c. 



off, and as for Arctic and Common Terns, it is impossible for 

 me to give you any idea, they are so numerous now. Of 

 Eider Ducks we have about G5 batched off. I have got 

 25 Sandwich Terns sitting yet, and 10 or 12 Eider Ducks 

 not hatched off yet ; and also a great many Arctic and 

 Common Terns.' The watcher on the Outer Farnes^ on the 

 same date, reported : — ' The Ducks, on the whole, I think, 

 are a very fair average, as I have seen a good many of their 

 young ones.' Mr. Paynter, who for many years has taken 

 very great interest in the birds during the breeding-season, 

 writes : — ' I should say only about 60 Eider Ducks hatched 

 off their broods instead of a hundred. The Gulls, both Black- 

 backed (the Lesser) and Herring Gulls, are quite as numerous 

 as ever ; also the Terns, Oyster Catchers, and Dotterels about 

 the same. Puffins and Guillemots rather more numerous, 

 especially the Bridled Guillemots .... If the weather liad 

 been warmer and not so wet, I think there would have been 

 far more young birds than usual. Cormorants were much 

 the same, about 50 nests. As far as I could make out, there 

 were only two pairs of Roseate Terns.' " 



Fydrochelidon leucoptera in Neio Zealand and Australia. — 

 In his ' Tabular List of Australian Birds,' Mr. Ramsay rather 

 questions the occurrence of this Tern in New Zealand and 

 Australia. As regards its appearance in New Zealanrl, nothing, 

 as Mr. Howard Saunders has pointed out to us, can be moi'e 

 explicit than the statement by Sir W. L. Buller (B. New 

 Zealand, 1st ed. p. 287) respecting an adult specimen now 

 in the Colonial Museum, and shot, along with another, in 

 the Province of Nelson, on Dec. 12th, 1868 ; and the same 

 authority says that this Tern has been discovered in Australia 

 since the publication of Gould's ' Handbook'*. Mr. Saunders 

 has no evidence of his own to adduce, and there are no speci- 

 mens of this species in liis collection from further south 

 than Celebes. 



* Iluttoii (B. N. Z. p. 78), 1871, says, 'T notice that it has also lately 

 beeu obtained iu Northern Australia." 



