278 LAKID/E. 



there by day. It is said that they come late iu the evening, re- 

 main diu'ing the night, and leave at early day-break when, about 

 the time of their departure, their calls are heard. Different per- 

 sons made this statement, independently of each other; but I 

 am inclined to consider it imaginary. The chief cause of their 

 desertion seems to be owing to a man in charge of the remains 

 of a vessel wrecked here last winter, living constantly on the 

 island, though his habitation is certainly the reverse of conspi- 

 cuous. It is about the smallest and most primitive human habi- 

 tation I ever saw ; consisting of a few old sails throwm over the 

 timbers of the wreck in a hollow among the rocks, with an en- 

 trance, in dimensions very little exceeding that to a respectable 

 dog-house, and altogether in picturesqueness well worthy the at- 

 tention of a Prout. But in addition to him, there are men daily 

 on the island working about the wreck. There have also of late 

 been several boats^ crews from Groomsport, daily at ebb tide, en- 

 gaged in grappling for the iron of the splendid steam-ship Sea 

 King, which was lost here. 



A gentleman residing on the coast towards the entrance of 

 Belfast Bay, remarked to me as a singular fact, at the beginning 

 of August 1850, that the herring fry had come in this year with- 

 out a single tern after them. The circumstance can at once be 

 accounted for by the total absence of these birds from their only 

 breeding-haunt in this quarter, the Mew Island. 



Later in the season, however, at the migratory period, some 

 terns did appear in the bay, as, on the 8th of September, a few 

 came under my notice near Craigavad. 



The roseate tern has very rarely been killed far up Belfast 

 Bay, but at Conswater Point, within about a mile of the town, it 

 has more than once been obtained, and here, the only one known 

 to Templeton as Irish, was killed on the 22nd of June, 1821, in 

 company with S. hirundo, of which four were brought down at 

 the same shot. A roseate, a Sandwich, and a common tern, sent 

 on the 16th of August, 1839, from Portaferry (Strangford Lough) 

 to Belfast, to be preserved, came under my inspection, but I could 



