The Zoologist — March, 1867. 629 



devour the worms and insects laid bare by the husbandman : at such 

 times it must be of immense service on account of the quantity it 

 consumes. The indigestible portions of the worms it devours are 

 vomited up in the shape of jelly, and should the bird have any fishy 

 substance in its throat a phosphorescent brilliancy is given to these 

 rejectse at night ; hence our Irish peasantry ignorantly imagine them 

 the remains of " falling stars." I kuow an old fellow who takes his 

 oath to having seen the "star" fall to the ground, and on going to 

 pick it up found it composed of " Starch, ready and all for washing ; 

 and when I seen what it was — God bless us ! (signing the cross) — I took 

 a tremblin', for I knew the good people] (fairies) were near, and when 

 I gother strength again I ran home beyant two mile, and fell widout 

 ■ life into the middle of the flure (floor). Well I went next day to show 

 the • star ' to another boy (in Ireland we are boys till we marry), and 

 blessed saints ! shure the ferment (firmament) must have dropped in 

 after I left, for the ground was thick with ' stars.' Oh ! divil a lie in 

 it, — there was starch enough there for a riformatry (reformatory where 

 washing is done by reclaimed females). Well ould Andy took to 

 laughing and said that say-gulls made them, but never b'lieve it, sir ; 

 he only said so because there was a power of gulls about the day 

 before." There are many Irish superstitions about the gull, and I 

 believe much of the "fairy talking," "laughing," "singing" and 

 " sighing," " little white women," &c, heard and seen at night could 

 be traced to the poor storm-bound gull. 



Nidification. — From early in May the common gull seeks its 

 breeding-haunts, which are the shores of lakes and salt marshes, 

 unfrequented islands, peninsulars and rocky cliffs. The nest is placed 

 by the water's edge on the face of the frowning precipice, and on the 

 top of the dizzy cliff; amongst the sedgy grass, upon the cold rock, 

 and amongst the green samphire or the crisp ling : it is composed of 

 grasses, ling, dry sea-weed and other floating rubbish, turf and various 

 other dry substances. The eggs are three in number, olive-brown, 

 yellowish brown, greenish brown, grayish or greenish white, spotted, 

 blotched, and sometimes streaked with gray and various shades of 

 brown and purple. It breeds in many places gregariously, though as 

 an Irish bird it might be termed solitary, our sea-cliffs being but 

 sparingly frequented by it, and then the nests are scattered most 

 frequently in the lofty regions of the herring gull. I am sorry I 

 cannot say whether it nests upon the shores of our lakes. Any Irish 

 sea-fowl station that can boast of the common gull breeding amongst 



