CANON TRISTRAM- AUDOUIN'S GULL 167 



some good varieties of plumage in these. If you 

 do not think that three figures would crowd a 

 plate too much, I should like to have the most 

 fully adult bird that you can procure as the 

 principal foreground figure, the most uni-coloured 

 bird of those sent in the near background, and 

 one of the strongly barred birds on the wing. 

 If this is too much for one plate we must have 

 two, with adult and strongly barred young one 

 in first, and two of most widely divergent types 

 in the other, a flat sea-coast scene. 



' In Boss's Gull I should be glad if you could 

 make the wedge-shaped tail as conspicuous as 

 possible, and the breast may be brilliantly rose- 

 coloured. An Arctic-sea scene with cloudless 

 pale-blue sky and broken ice-floe, not bergs, will 

 best suit this plate.' 



To Canon Tristram. 



' Lilford : March 31, 1891. 



' Thank you very much for your friendly 

 thought in reporting progress up to Colombo, in 

 your letter posted at that port on the 8th. 

 Since the lighthouse has been established on 

 Alboran, I fear that Audouin's Gull has had but 



