210 BRITISH BIRDS. 



The Black-cap Gulls breed on the marshy edges 

 of rivers, lakes, and fens, in the interior parts of 

 the country. They make their nest among" the 

 reeds and rushes, of heath or dried grass, and lay 

 three eggs of an olive brown, blotched over with 

 spots and streaks of dull rusty red. As soon as 

 the young are able to accompany them, they all 

 retire from those places, and return to the sea. 



In former times these birds were looked upon as 

 valuable property, by the owners of some of the 

 fens and marshes in this kingdom, who, every 

 autumn, caused the little islets or hafts in those 

 wastes, to be cleared of the reeds and rushes, in 

 order properly to prepare the spots for the recep- 

 tion of the old birds in the spring, to which places, 

 at that season, they regularly returned in great 

 flocks to breed. The young ones were then highly 

 esteemed as excellent eating, and on that account 

 were caught in great numbers before they were 

 able to fly. Six or seven men, equipped for this 

 business, waded through the pools, and with long 

 staves drove them to the land, against nets placed 

 upon the shores of these hafts, where they were 

 easily caught by the hand, and put into pens ready 

 prepared for their reception. The gentry assembled 

 from all parts to see the sport. Dr. Plot,* in his 

 Natural History of Staffordshire, published in 1686, 

 gives the above particulars, and says that in this 



* Dr. Plot describes them as coming annually "to certain pools 

 in the estate of the right worshipful Sir Charles Skrymsher, Knight, 

 to build and breed, and to no other estate but that of this family, in 

 or near the county, to which they have belonged ultra hominum 

 memoriam, and never moved from it, though they have changed 

 their station often." What the doctor relates of the attachment of 



