LARIDjE. 287 



the sea-coasts of Britain and Ireland ; but in the spring it 

 resorts to inland marshes, lakes, or ponds, to breed* Mul- 

 titudes congregate together in selected spots during the 

 season of incubation, and in one locality mentioned by Mr. 

 Hewitson, as many as a thousand eggs in a day have been 

 taken from the nests of these birds. In some parts their 

 breeding-stations are secured from intrusion, or the benefit 

 of collecting the eggs, which are agreeable for eating, is let. 

 A gullery, it is stated, has been known to produce a revenue 

 to the proprietor of from fifty to eighty pounds a year. This 

 Gull differs in its time as well as habits of breeding from 

 other species of the same genus, its usual time of incubation 

 being May, although eggs have been found even in April. 

 The nest, which is composed of grass or reeds and sedge, 

 is flat, and sometimes placed in a tuft of rushes or other 

 herbage ; and the eggs, three or four in number, while dif- 

 fering very greatly from one another, may perhaps be de- 

 scribed as generally of a yellowish-brown, olive, or greenish 

 colour, spotted and blotched with grey and brown. 



In the northerruislands, the Orkneys and Shetlands, these 

 birds are not numerous, but they breed in limited numbers 

 on some of the small islands contiguous to the sea, generally 

 selecting those which are in the neighbourhood of deep 



