Occasional 
visitant. 
484 NATATORES. LARUS. GULL. 
interior of the country, where they form their nests in the 
reeds and other aquatic herbage. In the Kittiwake an ap- 
proach to the Petrils is perceptible in the imperfect develop- 
ment of the hind toe; and in the decidedly oceanic habits of 
the bird. 
LITTLE GULL. 
Larus minutus, Pall. 
PLATE XCII. 
Larus minutus, Pall. Reise, 3. 702. No. 35.—Gmel. Syst. 1. 595.—Steph- 
Shaw’s Zool. 13. 206.—Flem. Br. Anim. 1. 142. No. 2. Straggler. 
Larus atricilloides, Gme/. Syst. 1. 601.—LZath. Ind. Orn. 2. 813. 
Mouette Pygmée, Temm. Man. d’Orn. 2. 787. 
Die Kleine Meve, Meyer, Tasschenb. Deut. 2. 488. 
Little Gull, Lath. Syn. 6. 391. 17.—Mont. Ornith. Dict. and Sup. App. to 
Sup.—Shaw’s Zool. 13. 206.—Bewick’s Br. Birds, ed. 1826, p. 226. 
Tue Little Gull, as its trivial name leads us to conclude, 
is one of the smallest of the genus, and was first noticed as 
an occasional visitant to the British coasts by Monracu, 
who, in the Appendix to the Supplement of his Ornithologi- 
cal Dictionary, has accurately described and given a figure 
of an individual that was killed wpon the Thames near to 
Chelsea, but in an immature state of plumage, being that ac- 
quired at the first autumnal moult. Since that time other 
instances have occurred at different seasons, so as to exhibit 
it when arrived at maturity, both in the winter and summer 
plumage ; and, to put us in possession of all the changes it 
undergoes, a bird of the year in its first plumage, and pre- 
vious to the autumnal moult, was killed upon the Frith of 
Clyde, of which the second figure on the plate is a represen- 
tation. This specimen, now in the Edinburgh College Mu- 
seum, was at first ticketed as the Gull-billed Tern, but the 
error was subsequently discovered, and the nomenclature 
corrected. 
