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MARSH OR GULL-BILLED TERN. 



Sterna anglica, Montagu. 



PLATE CCCCX. Male. 



Having taken six specimens of tlie Marsh Tern of America to the 

 British Museum, and minutely compared them in all their details with 

 the specimens of the Gull-hilled Tern which formed part of the collec- 

 tion of Colonel Montagu, and were procured in the South of England, 

 I found them to agree so perfectly that no doubt remained with me of 

 the identity of the bird loosely described by Wilson with that first 

 ^distinguished by the English Ornithologist. 



I have shot several Marsh Terns out of the same flock, in the early 

 part of spring, when the youngest must therefore have been nearly a 

 year old, and found them all equally perfect and beautiful in their 

 plumage, but differing considerably in the length of their bills, tarsi, 

 toes, and wings, in so much that a person bent on forming new species 

 might easily gratify his inclination by founding " specific characters" 

 on differences, which however would be merely those of males and 

 females of different ages. With me the habits of birds, when minutely 

 and faithfully described, go much farther to establish the identity of 

 individuals found in the different parts of the globe, than the best and 

 closest descriptions of prepared skins. Colonel Montagu informs us 

 that the Gull-billed Tern, Sterna anglica, resorts by preference to lakes 

 and rivers of the interior ; and Mr Selby states, that " on the Euro- 

 pean continent it frequents the marshes and the lakes of Neusidel and 

 Flatten in Hungary." The same naturalist also says : *' Upon investi- 

 gating specimens from North America, I feel no hesitation in consi- 

 dering the Marsh Tern of Wilson's North American Ornithology to 

 be the same bird, although Mr Ord (in his eighth volume of that work) 

 is inclined to regard it as distinct, in consequence of some difference 

 between the length of the bill and tarsi, as expressed in a drawing of 

 Sterna aranea that he examined, and the proportions of those parts in 

 the first species as given by Montagu and Temminck." 



Now, Reader, allow me to lay before you an account of the habits 

 of the Marsh Tern, a figure of an adult individual selected from among 



