GREAT SLACK-HEADED GULL. 83 



PALMIPEDES. 



Family LARIDJE. (Botiaparie.) 



Genus Larus. (^Linnceus .') 



GREAT BLACK-HEADED GULL. 



Larus ichthya'etos. 



Larus ichthya'etos, Pallas. 



Xema ichthycBtum, Bonaparte. 



Mouette ichthyaete. Of the French. 



Ftsch?}iove, Of the Germans. 



Rylali, Of the Russians. 



Charahalta, Of the Tartars. 



Great Gull, Latham. 



Specific Characters. — Spring plumage. Beak large and thick; tarsi long; 

 head and neck velvety black, with a white spot over each eye; mantle 

 greyish blue. Length, twenty-five inches; wing, from carpus to tip, eighteen 

 inches and a half; tarsus three inches; bare part above knee one inch 

 and three quarters ; bill, from gape, three inches and five eighths ; bill, 

 from forehead, two inches and a half. 



This interesting bird was shot the end of May or beginning of June, 

 1859, in the River Exmouth, by "William Pine, the boatman of W. 

 Taylor, Esq., of Bridgewater, whence the specimen passed to the late 

 r. W. L. Eoss, Esq., by whom a description will be found in the 

 "Zoologist" for 1860, p. 6860, as well as in the "Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History" for December of that year. 



As it has not been figured as an English specimen, it will fall into 

 the list of birds introduced into this work. Its appearance on our 

 shores is quite accidental. It belongs properly to the Caspian and Red 

 Seas, and, like other large species, occasionally flies out of its native 

 localities. 



