NOTES AND QUERIES. 121 



one, and has the shafts of the primaries paler than either my American skin 

 or Mr. Pershouse's specimen, but still the shaft is by no means white as in 

 Larus ridibundus, and besides this there is on the inner web of the first 

 primary of Bonaparte's Gull a black streak, on the inner web next to the 

 shaft, the outer part of the web being white, the white only running up to 

 the shaft at one part about half an inch from the tip ; the tip itself is black. 

 In Larus ridibundus this order of things is reversed, the inner web bein» 

 white next the shaft, with a small streak of black outside the white. This 

 is equally applicable to the second and third quills, and will at once dis- 

 tinguish this bird from Larus ridibundus. From the immature Little Gull 

 the primaries may also serve to distinguish it. There is no white on the 

 shaft of the first three primaries of the Little Gull, the shafts being black 

 to the tips, nor does the white on the inner web anywhere extend to the 

 shaft. In the Little Gull also there is no white on the outer web of the 

 fourth and fifth primaries, as there is in Larus Philadelphia, the white being 

 very visible even in the closed wing : these distinctions, many of which are 

 pointed out in Mr. Howard Saunders's paper on the Larina in the ' Pro- 

 ceedings of the Zoological Society' (1876, p. 206j, and the figures of the 

 first three primaries of Larus ridibundus and Larus Philadelphia there 

 given, aud which are apparent in the specimens of all three birds now 

 before me, will, I think, be sufficient to help anyone into whose hands a 

 specimen of Bonaparte's Gull may fail to recognize it at once, and to dis- 

 tinguish it from either of the commoner British Gulls for which it may be 

 mistaken.— Cecil Smith (Bishops Lydeard, Taunton). 



Sooty Shearwater at Bridlington.— In December, 1882, an example 

 of this widely-distributed Shearwater, so long confused with the Greater 

 Shearwater, as a visitor to our shores, was presented to the Oxford Museum 

 by the Rev. E. Elton, of Wheatley Vicarage, Oxon, at the suggestion of 

 Professor Westwood. Mr. Elton informs me that this example of Puffinus 

 griseus was shot by his nephew, the late Mr. John Elton, in Bridlington 

 Bay in 1872. The fishermen there called it "the black Shearwater." 

 This appellation seems analagous to that of " Black Hagdon," by which, 

 according to Mr. Dresser ('Birds of Europe'), it is known in the Bay of 

 Fundy. [It is also called Hagdown in the South of Ireland, see Thompson 

 vol. hi., p. 408.] So far as records in ' The Zoologist ' go, this Shearwater, 

 now at Oxford, is the last obtained on the British coast; at least I have 

 failed to find any (but the old, Irish) reference to the species, since three 

 were obtained in September, 1866, also at Bridlington, as recorded by Mr. 

 W. Boultou (Zool., 1867, p. 543) ; at the time these birds were supposed 

 to be immature Great Shearwaters. Messrs. Clarke and Roebuck include 

 Puffinus griseus in their list of the Vertebrates of Yorkshire (p. 85) as a 

 " casual visitant, of rare occurrence in the winter." But the first British 

 example, apparently, on record, was obtained by Mr. G. Marwood, juu., at 



