THE COMMON GULL. §55 



middle to the end of May 1848, great numbers of their eggs were 

 found. 



I requested that a few eggs would be procured during the en- 

 suing season in proof of the species, and they were obtained for 

 me; — genuine eggs of L. canus. But with them I received the 

 grievous information that in two days eight hundred and fifty of 

 their eggs and those of terns were collected by my friend and his 

 assistants. By far the greater number were those of the gull, 

 as it was early in the season ; this bird laying tliree weeks 

 sooner than the tern (^S*. hinindo). 



The north of Europe — coast of Norway, &c. — is the great 

 breeding-haunt of the common gull. 



In the summer of 1826, I remarked immature gulls of this 

 species in Holland ; very far up the Rhine ; about the lakes of 

 Switzerland, and what seemed to be they also, near the shores of 

 Italy. "When proceeding by steam-packet, on the 13th and 14th 

 of April, 1841, along the coast from Leghorn to near the Bay 

 of Naples, a number of gulls, wliich appeared to be L. canus, 

 were seen about the vessel : aU that I particularly observed were 

 immature — no other Larus was within view during these two 

 days. On the 16th, gulls, apparently L. canus, were seen in 

 the Straits of Messina. When sailing in H.M.S. Beacon, from 

 Malta to the Morea — 21st to the 28th of April — similar guUs 

 were in view as we approached within twenty-five miles of land, 

 towards Navarino, and became numerous at the entrance of the 

 bay; where they seemed to have breeding-places in the chfl's. 

 A note dated Syra, May 7 th, is to the effect that the only 

 bird now common in the harbour here is a guU like L. canus in 

 size and colour, but a dead specimen which I saw on the beach 

 differed from this species in having on the lower mandible 

 a red spot, like that of the herring-gnU ; all the rest of the 

 bill was yellow ; the upper plumage was of a darker blue than in 

 L. canus ; the tarsi yellow as in the adult L. canus at this season. 

 All I have seen here, during t\yo or tlu-ee days, were adult birds, 

 of which small flocks were always in view; — subsequently immature 

 birds were met with. I do not find in Temminck's or Degland's 



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