The Gull.-] OF ORKNEY. 117 



the lower mandible is a large angular knob, which is black 

 towards the opening of the mouth, but reddish below, the 

 colour of the rest of the bill was a pale yellow ; the nostrils 

 were long, and broadest toward the point of the bill ; the 

 head was large, and on the crown a few ash-coloured spots ; 

 the neck to the shoulders, the breast, and belly white; the back 

 and wings black ; the quill feathers were all tipt with white; 

 the rump white, with twelve spotted feathers in the tail ; the legs 

 were bare above the knee for a small space, as in the others 

 of the kind, of a pale flesh-colour inclining to white ; the 

 claws black. 



I never saw its egg, but Mr Pennant tells us it is very blunt 

 at each end, of a dusky-olive colour, quite black at the greater 

 end, and the rest of it thinly marked with dusky spots. 



I know not if there is any variety \\ith red feet which Linnaeus 

 describes his with ; mine, too, had a few ash-coloured spots 

 on the head which Mr Pennant's has not, but this might have 

 been owing to difference of sex or age, as there is no genus 

 of birds perhaps which passes through more changes of colour 

 than the gull-kind, which seldom arrive at their colour the 

 first year; 



