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ON THE OCCURRENCE OF THE SMALLER SOOTY TERN 
AT THE! MOUTH OF THE THAMES. 
By Howarp Saunpers, F.L.S., F.Z.S. 
SoME months ago Mr. E. Bidwell, whose name will be familiar 
to readers of ‘The Zoologist,’ and who is unremitting in his 
researches for rarities in the markets and neighbourhood of 
London, asked me to examine a specimen of a Tern in the 
possession of a local birdstuffer, named Barton, residing near the 
West India Docks. It proved to be an adult example of the 
Smaller Sooty Tern, Sterna anestheta, Scop., a species not 
hitherto recorded even as a straggler to the British or indeed to 
the European coasts, and it bore every appearance of having been 
recently monnted “from the flesh.” Mr. Bidwell subsequently 
purchased it, and at his request I exhibited it at the meeting of 
the Zoological Society at Hanover Square on the 6th February, 
1877. The following letter, addressed to him by the son of the 
man from whom he purchased it, contains all the information that 
has yet been obtained as regards the locality where the specimen 
was procured :— 
“The Tern you purchased of my father was brought to him in 
the flesh by one of the Trinity-House men who had just returned 
from duty on board a lightship at the mouth of the Thames in 
September, 1875. My father skinned the bird and brought it to 
me to stuff. The skin was perfectly fresh then, and portions of 
the flesh were adhering to it. I cleaned the skin and set it up.” 
Mr. Bidwell and I interviewed both father and son on the 
matter, and there does not seem to be the slightest ground for 
doubting that the specimen in question really was obtained some- 
where at the mouth of the Thames as stated. The man who 
brought it in returned to his duty, and unless he reads this or 
revisits either of the Bartons with some other bird “out of the 
common,’ we shall probably remain in ignorance as to the precise 
lightship where the bird was taken, doubtless during the equinoctial 
gales, as it was obtained in September. 
There are at present three known species of the Sooty Tern 
group, the largest and best known of which is— 
STERNA FULIGINOSA, Gm, Syst. Nat., i., p. 605 (1788). Its 
habitat may be described as intertropical, or at most between 
