628 LARID^F. 



him ; I believe it was a skylark. After some ineffectual 

 efforts to swallow it, he paused for a moment ; and then, as 

 if suddenly recollecting himself, he ran off full speed to a 

 pan of water, shook the bird about in it until well soaked, 

 and immediately gulped it down without further trouble. 

 Since that time he invariably has recourse to the same expe- 

 dient in similar cases." 



The Lesser Black-backed Gull breeds abundantly in the 

 Faeroes and along the west and north coasts of Norway and 

 Finland ; and it extends from the Baltic across Russia as 

 high up as Archangel. It is not known to breed on the 

 coasts of Northern Germany, Denmark, or Holland, although 

 frequenting them during the greater part of the year ; but it 

 probably nests in the north-west of France, inasmuch as it 

 is known to do so on at least two of the smaller Channel 

 Islands. The birds which breed in the north of Europe, 

 inclusive of the Faeroes and the Shetlands, migrate south- 

 wards on the approach of winter, and visit the coasts, inland 

 lakes, and larger rivers of the Continent down to the Medi- 

 terranean and the Black Sea. Capt. Shelley says that this 

 species ranges up the Nile to Nubia, returning northwards in 

 the latter part of April, but Von Heugiin states that it is a 

 resident in the Red Sea as far as the Gulf of Aden. It 

 appears to be very rare, if indeed it occurs at all, on the 

 Caspian ; for the dark-mantled Siberian Herring Gull, L. 

 affinis, replaces it on that great inland sea, and to the east 

 of it, so far as is known, throughout the whole of Northern 

 Asia in summer, and on the coasts of India in winter. All 

 the examples recorded under the name of Larus fuscus from 

 the coast of Baluchistan and Sind have proved to be L, 

 affinis, which was, probably, Jerdon's so-called L. fuscus 

 procured in the Deccan ; such are, certainly, the birds so 

 named by Dybowski from Dauria ; and the statement that 

 L. fuscus occurs in China has been thoroughly disproved 

 (P. Z. S. 1878, p. 174). The eastern range of this species 

 cannot therefore be traced beyond the Caspian. To the 

 westward it is recorded by Mr. F. D. Godman as observed 

 in pairs in May at Teneriffe, and at Madeira in June ; Col. 





