[1SS4. Stkjnkger, Antilfcta Orni/Z/oloi^icd. S^S 



dotted witli white: back, wings, and tail, ash-colour: the outer quills deep 

 ash-colour: all the under parts white : legs flesh-colour : claws black. 



"Place. Inhabits Eirypf: found in flocks in yaiiunrv, especially about 

 Cairo." 



This description fits better than the average descriptions of that 

 time. The only discrepancy of any account is that the feet are 

 said to be 'flesh-colour,' while in the living bird in winter they 

 are decidedly brown. The color in the dried skin, however, is 

 such as to easily induce the describer to believe that they were 

 flesh-colored in life. On the other hand the mistake of the author 

 is not worse than the errors of Linnaeus in describing the feet 

 of Sterna nigra as 'rubri,' those oi jissipes as rubicundi,' and 

 those of ncevia as 'virescentes' ; in fact the descriptions of the old 

 authors are so defective, as far as the colors of the naked parts are 

 concerned, that little stress can be laid upon them except in cases 

 where they are known not to change when the specimens become 

 dry. Gmelin's description (Syst. Nat., I, 2, 1788, p. 606), is 

 essentially the same as that given above. 



Of course the statement concerning the locality is not diagnos- 

 tic per se; but it has to be taken into account. If the description 

 is diagnostic at the time of its piablication, that is all that is re- 

 quired ; and if the species described is said to have been common in 

 Egypt at the time of its discovery it would not imperil the per- 

 tinencv of the name if afterwards a species was discovered in a 

 distant locality, to which the first diagnosis might equally well 

 apply. And in the present instance the habitat assigned to the 

 nilotica corroborates the opinion here advocated, that it is the 

 same bird which many years after (1813) was called anglica. 

 In confirmation I extract the follow^ing from Dresser's Birds of 

 Europe, concerning the geographical distribution of Sterna an- 

 glica : "Throughout Southern Europe . . . and North Africa, east- 

 ward to Southern Siberia and the China Seas down to Australia. 

 ... In Great Britain it is a rare straggler .... Captain Shelley says 

 that he found it most plentiful in Lower Egypt and the Fayoon, 

 and frequently met with it as fi^r up the Nile as Sioot ; and von 

 Heuglin states that it is a resident, and breeds in the lagoons of 

 Lower Egypt, and is by no means rare on the Nile, where it 

 ranges southward to the Blue and White Nile." 



I think the above is sufficient to show that Hasselquist's name 

 is the proper appellation for the Gull-l)illed Tern, which I con- 

 tend should stand as 



