No. 4.] DECREASE OF BIRDS. 453 



ley. I am not aware that they now nest anywhere in the 

 State. No doubt they would have been driven from the 

 interior of the State long ago, had they not been well able 

 to take care of themselves by diving. They are still to be 

 seen in the migrations in most of the larger and more re- 

 mote bodies of water, and seem to maintain their numbers 

 along the coast, as does also the red-throated loon. 



Family Laridcp. — Gulls and Terns. 

 Certain of these birds were once very abundant in the 

 breedino; season on Lonof Island Sound, and bred also in 

 suitable islands all along the Massachusetts coast. Miss 

 Katharine P. Loring of Prides Crossing, Beverly, writes 

 that about forty years ago there were large numbers of 

 "gulls" in spring at Gooseberry Island and Eagle Island 

 off the Beverly shore, and that these islands were "covered 

 with their eggs." The birds referred to were probably 

 terns, or " mackerel gulls," as they are called locally. The 

 Arctic and roseate terns are both recorded as breeding at 

 Beverly and Ipswich as late as 184G and 18()9 respectively.* 

 These terns, together with the common and least terns and 

 the laughing gull, bred abundantly along our coast as late as 

 the early part of the nineteenth century. They were grad- 

 ually driven off the breeding grounds by eggers. In the 

 decade before 1890 the demand for the plumage of gulls and 

 terns for millinery purposes became so great that they were 

 menaced Avith extermination. Mr. Geo. H. Mackay says 

 that he has been informed that one party of gunners killed 

 no less than ten thousand of these birds on Muskeeget 

 Island in one year. Since then Mr. Mackay, who was for 

 years a member of the connnittee on bird protection of the 

 Aniei'ican Ornithologists' Union, has succeeded in securing 

 protection for the birds breeding on this and other islands, 

 as a result of which they have increased enormously. TT(^ 

 says that they are now more abundant than at any time for 

 many years. The least tern, or sea swallow, however, 

 Avhich was formerly al)undant, but was one of the chief 

 victims of the milliners, has not, he says, shared in this in- 



* " Kii'tls of Massiichust'tts," Howe and Allen, ]>. 27. 



