BuLuer.—Note On Mr. H. Saunders’ Review of the Laring. 359 
some ornithologist, who will devote his attention to a colony during the 
breeding-season, observing the produce of all these unions, and, if possible, 
marking the nestlings before they take wing. It is worthy of notice that in 
Spitzbergen, its most northern breeding-ground, neither Dr. Malmgren nor 
Professor Newton found a single example of the dark whole-coloured form ; 
all those which Admiral Collinson’s and Dr. Rae’s expeditions brought 
home from the far North are also white-breasted specimens, which looks as 
if the dark form was a more exclusively Southern one." 
Art.—XLVI.—WNote on Mr. Howard Saunders’ Review of the Larine, or 
Gulls. By Dr. Burrzz, C.M.G. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 11th January, 1879.) 
Mr. Howard Savunpers, in his revision of the Larine, in the Proc. Zool. 
Society, Part I., 1878, steps out of his way (at page 161) to notice my 
having adopted Bonaparte's Bruchiyavia, “a genus playfully made,” for a 
New Zealand species, this being as he states ““its only claim to remem- 
brance.” Had Mr. Saunders possessed that close acquaintance with the 
literature of his subject which is supposed to be an essential qualification in 
& monographist, he would of course have been aware that Mr. Gould, in his 
* Handbook to the Birds of Australia " (published in 1865), adopted Bona- 
parte's playful name for **a genus of gulls the members of which are 
delieate in their structure, elegant in their appearance, and graceful in all 
their actions '——deliberately substituting that generic title for Xema, the 
one previously «sed in his folio edition. 
In 1869, in a communieation to * The Ibis,' I described a new species of 
this group from New Zealand, and provisionally referred it to that genus 
under the name of Bruchigavia melanorhyncha. To this, no doubt, Mr. 
Saunders' attempted witticism refers, although (at page 190) he incorrectly 
quotes me for ** Bruchigavia melanorhynchus.” But when I treated of the 
group more exhaustively in my ‘ Birds of New Zealand’ (1872), as Mr. 
Saunders is or surely ought to be aware, I adopted the generic division of 
Larus for this /— L. bulleri) and the allied forms. 
Mr. Saunders is entitled to our thanks, however, for having apparently 
cleared up the confusion in the nomenclature of this species with Larus 
pomare. He states that during a recent visit to Bremen he went into the whole 
question with Dr. Finsch, who had previously studied the subject, and had 
made numerous and "aim drawings of the primaries of Bruch's types of 
L. pomare in the Mainz Museum, and of many other specimens. He gives 
figures of the three outer primaries of Larus bulleri, and says, “ I have 
examined the type of Bruch’s L. pomare of 1855, and it is undoubtedly of : 
this species; but the type of his L. pomarre of 1853 is as certainly L. nova. 
