ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



BRITISH BIRDS. 



THE GULLS. ORDER LARIFORMES. 



THESE birds, though at first sight very different in appearance 

 from the Plovers, are really allied to them. They possess cha- 

 racters, external and internal, which indicate close affinity ; but 

 they are easily recognised by the structure of their feet, the 

 Gulls being entirely web-footed, the Plovers not. The eggs, 

 however, of some of the smaller Terns are almost indistinguish- 

 able from some of the Plovers' eggs, and not only in the 

 colour of the latter, but in the form of the nest, there is so 

 much similarity that it is impossible to deny the close 

 relationship of Terns and Plovers. The latest, and at the 

 same time the greatest, authority on the Lariformes, Mr. 

 Howard Saunders, has given the following characters for the 

 Order in the British Museum " Catalogue of Birds " : The 

 palate is " schizognathous " or split ; the nasals schizorhinal. 

 In the wing the fifth secondary is wanting, and the number of 

 cervical vertebrae is fifteen. The young are hatched covered 

 with down, and are able to run about in a few hours. Instead 

 of the four eggs which form the complement of those of the 

 Charadriiformes, the number laid by the Gulls and Terns 

 seldom exceeds three. The Gulls are absolutely cosmopolitan 

 in range, and they are divided into two families, the Larida, 

 containing the Gulls and Terns, and the Stercoraritdce , or Skuas. 

 The Skuas possess a bare wax-like base to the bill, such as 

 is seen in Birds of Prey and Parrots, but the Laridce have no 

 cere. The breast-bone in the Gulls and Terns has two notches 



