NOTES AND QUERIES. 175 



allowed to fly, has from that time to the present paid me frequent visits, 

 sometimes staying for two or three days together, sometimes leaving 

 immediately after feeding-time, and sometimes not making its appearance 

 for weeks together. It has now so nearly reached its adult plumage that I 

 think it worth while to give a short description of it, as I have lately had a 

 good many opportunities of looking at it, and am always afraid each visit 

 may be its last, as it might meet with an accident on oue of its journeys to 

 and from the Bristol Channel, though as a rule it flies very high and quite 

 out of shot. The wing-coverts and mantle appear now to have assumed 

 their fully adult colouring, there being none of the brown markings of the 

 immature plumage left. The quills, however, are not those of the adult 

 bird, though I should think after another moult they, as well as the tail- 

 feathers, which still have a few brown markings left, would be so. The 

 wing-coverts and mantle are very pale indeed for a Black-back, though 

 much too dark for a Herring Gull. The legs are flesh-colour like the 

 Herring Gull, if anything a little brighter and more highly coloured, now 

 showing no sign of the yellow of the Lesser Black-back. Any one 

 shooting it and describing it might say it was a pale Lesser Black-back 

 with the legs and feet coloured like those of a Herring Gull, but I do not 

 think anyone would speak of it as a dark Herring Gull. The legs and 

 feet are both the same colour, not like those mentioned at p. 70 of ' The 

 Zoologist ' for 1882 as one yellow and one pale flesh-colour. With regard 

 to the remarks there made, I perfectly agree with my friend Mr. Howard 

 Saunders that that bird is not a hybrid between Larus fuscus and Larus 

 marinus. I believe these two gulls would never cross under any circum- 

 stances. But I do not go so far as to say, " I do not believe in hybrid 

 gulls in a wild state," for I do believe that the Herring Gull and the Lesser 

 Black-back would cross occasionally in a wild state, seeing the readiness 

 with .which they do so in captivity. I think an odd pair, a male of one 

 aud a female of the other, would breed without any difficulty, except, 

 perhaps, the difficulty of finding a breeding-place where they would be free 

 from persecution, for I do not think they would be allowed at a breeding 

 station of either Herring Gulls or Lesser Black-backs. The bird above 

 mentioned differs materially from Larus uffiuis, at least according to Mr. 

 Dresser's description, for he describes Larus affinis as having the legs aud 

 feet yellow. — Cecil Smith (Bishop's Lydeard, Taunton). 



Singular Cause of Death of a Chaffinch. — The circumstances of a 

 curious accident which a Robin met with, as recounted by Mr. Long (p. 1^3), 

 have brought to my mind an instance of a somewhat similar nature which 

 befel another small bird — namely, a Chaffinch — some years ago. On 

 June 11th, 1877, whilst passing through the Saudburn Woods, a few miles 

 from York, I picked up a dead male Chaffinch in breeding condition beneath 



