THE KOSEATE TEKN. 275 



other two species, I cannot but think that a number more of the 

 eggs examined must have been those of the roseate.^ On seeing 

 the boat's crew landing to collect eggs, we remarked to our boat- 

 men that the season was now so far advanced that many of them 

 might be found incubated ; but it was replied, that, on the con- 

 tvarj, they were all fresh-laid that morning, the island being not 

 only daily visited by egg-gatherers, but that boys sometimes 

 remain there all night, sleeping under the shelter of a rock, that 

 they may be the first at the gathering on the following morning. 

 So incessantly are the poor birds robbed of their eggs, that our 

 boatmen stated they can never bring forth their young until the 

 time of hay- harvest, when the people are too much occupied to 

 molest them.t 



The birds themselves, too, suffered much this year. In one fore- 

 noon at the end of May a party butchered not less than fifty, of 

 wliich about a dozen were the roseate, and all were afterwards 

 flung away as useless. A dozen, all arctic, were killed on the 

 1st of June, and subsequently four of the roseate were sent from 

 the island to a gentleman of my acquaintance. Our boatmen 

 stated, that they remembered these birds more than ten times as 

 numerous as at present. Their diminution is owing to their 

 eggs being more than ever sought after, and to the increasing 

 wanton persecution to which the birds themselves are sub- 

 jected in being killed by heartless shooters, who have no object in 

 view but their destruction. 



I have been much pleased by remarking the following trait in 



* Mr. Selby, who has had the best of opportunities for examining these eggs, 

 does not mention any difference in form between those of the roseate and arctic 

 species ; but remarks that the eggs of the former much resemble those of tlie latter, 

 " but arc a little larger, and with the ground-colour usually more inclining to cream- 

 white or pale wood-brown" (vol. ii. p. 471). 



Eggs, represented in Hewitson's work as those of the common and arctic tern, I 

 have frequently found in the same nest. This author admits that it is quite imi)os- 

 sible to distinguish the eggs of these two species from each other with certainty ; 

 but that those of the arctic ai-e generally the smaller of the two. 



f Mr. Knox, in his most pleasing ' Ornithological Rambles in Sussex,' at p. 2 14, 

 mentions a person having had a peculiar breed of dogs, which he successfully trained 

 to hunt for the eggs of terns, ring-dotterels, and lapwings on the coast of that 

 county ; but it is to be hoped that the breed has become extinct, never to be 

 renewed. 



T 2 



