132 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



Forth, is now in the possession of Dr Crombie, of North 

 Berwick. The late Dr John Alexander Smith exhibited 

 this bird at a meeting of your Society, and recorded it in 

 the fourth volume of the Proceedings (p. 207). The second 

 is the bird which I am enabled to bring before your notice 

 to-night, through the kindness of the Eev. F. Weldon 

 Champneys, who writes me as follows : 



" East Lodge, Frant, 

 "Tdnbridge Wells, January 2Q, 1884, 



"The Sabine's Gull, which I was fortunate enough to 

 obtain last autumn, is a male. It was shot on Loch Spelve, 

 Isle of Mull, September 7 or 8, 1883. There had been some 

 very rough weather. I saw it swimming about on the loch, 

 the weather and water being then quite calm. It allowed 

 our boat to approach within 35 to 40 yards, when it slowly 

 rose in flight. I shot at it with No. 3 shot, and though I 

 had hit it hard, it flew about 150 yards and settled again, 

 just as if not hurt. However, on rowing up to it, it allowed 

 me to take it up in my hand. One shot seemed to have 

 gone into its heart, but it was most tenacious of life, and 

 took me some minutes to kill it, so as not to hurt its 

 plumage. 



" It struck me at the time, from its tameness, that it did 

 not know much by experience of human nature." 



The earliest known specimen of this species is one now in 

 the Vienna Museum, which was received without any pub- 

 lished name or description from the Ornithological Institute 

 of that city, about 1806. Some twelve years later, the 

 species was described in a paper read before the Linnean 

 Society by the late Joseph Sabine, F.E.S., and in the 12th 

 volume of the Transactions a plate was given of the bird, 

 which was named after its discoverer, his brother, the late 

 Sir Edward Sabine, who, when accompanying the expedition 

 in search of the ISTorth-West Passage, obtained it in July 

 1818 on some small rocky islands off the west coast of Green- 

 land. 



The first British example of this bird of which we have 



