580 



he was shown the specimen, said by Graham, a bird-stuffer 

 of York, to have been shot near Tadcaster, and with the 

 permission of its then owner, and of Mr. (later Sir Wm. 

 M. E.) Milner, of Nun Appleton, who afterwards purchased 

 it, he sent it for the Author's inspection^ Sir W. Milner's 

 version, presumably derived from Graham, is that the bird 

 was killed on the 22nd December, 1846, by a Mr. Saxton, 

 of Aberford (Zool. p. 1694) ; but the following details 

 were supplied by Mr. Henry Milner (Zool. p. 1784) : 

 " Ross's Gull was killed by Horner, Lord Howden's head- 

 keeper, in February, 1847, in a ploughed field, near the 

 hamlet of Milford-cum-Kirby, in the parish of Kirby. Its 

 flight resembled, according to Homer's account, the flight 

 of any other Gull, and it did not seem at all shy." This 

 specimen, which is in winter plumage, and is now in the 

 Leeds Museum, has, in the opinion of several persons who 

 have examined it, the appearance of having been mounted 

 from a relaxed skin and not from ' the flesh ' ; the dates 

 assigned are, however, consistent with the absence of 

 the black collar ; and as one straggler of this species has 

 occurred in the Faeroes, and another in Heligoland, there is 

 no inherent improbability of its having been obtained in 

 Yorkshire. Macgillivray had already included this bird in 

 his Manual of British Ornithology, vol. ii. p. 254 (1842), 

 with the remark that " this species has once occurred in 

 Ireland," but of this there is no corroborative evidence.* 



The two first examples of this rare Arctic Gull were 

 obtained on the 23rd and 27th June, 1823, on Parry's second 

 voyage, at Alagnak, Melville Peninsula, 69 30' N. lat., and 

 the species was named by Richardson after its discoverer, 

 Mr., afterwards Sir James C. Ross ; but in the matter of 

 nomenclature he had been anticipated by Macgillivray. One 

 of these specimens is in the Edinburgh Museum ; the other, 

 which was given to the late Mr. J. Sabine, is probably the 

 one which is now in the Derby Museum at Liverpool. 



* A Mr. J. B. Ellmann has stated that an adult male was shot and presented 

 to him by his friend Mr. Vidler. of Pevensey, and this bare assertion, unaccom- 

 panied by any details, was inserted in ' The Zoologist,' p. 3388. 



