364 LAlllDyE. 



was four inches and a half broad to the points of the toes on 

 either side. A bird shot at the Giant's Causeway, was, excepting 

 a small Idotea, filled with univalve mollusca, portion of a Patella 

 ccerulea, a few small whole shells of Littorina rucUs, three small 

 perfect specimens of Purpura lapillus half an inch in length, 

 and about seventy examples of the inner central column of full- 

 grown individuals of the same species.'^ 



The circumstance of gulls retiring from the sea inland at a 

 particular time of the tide, and resting among the heath, is agree- 

 ably noticed and accounted for by Mr. Lawrence Edmonston, of 

 Zetland, in one of his very interesting and well-written papers in 

 the ' Edinburgh Philosophical Journal' (vol. vii. 1st series, 1822), 

 entitled " Remarks on the Larus ■parasitictis, kc." I have ob- 

 served limited numbers of the gull under consideration, to do so 

 about wild breeding-haunts, as Horn Head, &c. From Belfast 

 Bay, however, whence herons, curlews, and other grallatorial 

 birds retire during the time that the tide covers the mud banks, 

 neither the herring nor other gulls leave it. They are content 

 to float upon the rising waters, and to fall with them until 

 left upon the banks again. The herring-gull frequents inland 

 lakes ; in the autumn as well as winter I have observed it about 

 Lough Neagh, &c. 



A gull of this species, captured on the Mew Island, lived, ac- 

 cording to my informant (its captor there), nearly twenty years 

 at the inn of Donaghadee, where, after having been eighteen 

 years, it laid two eggs.f Dr. Harvey, of Cork, stated in a com- 

 munication to the 'Zoologist,' dated June 17th, 1846 (p. 1395) — 

 " My friend, Robert Parker, Esq., of Carrigrohan, in this neigh- 

 bourhood, has had a pair of herring-gulls (L. arrjentatiis, Lin.) in 

 confinement since they were taken from the nest, now three or 



* Dr. J. L. Drammond has remarked to me that of all the native bii'ds dissected 

 by him, the guUs had the most orange-colom-ed fat. 



t Montagu, in the Supplement to his ' Ornithological Dictionary,' gives a most 

 interesting account of a herring-gull which, at the date of his writing, had been thir- 

 teen years in his menagerie. Mr. Hewitson, on the authority of the llev. W. D. Fox, 

 gives an instance of one of these birds daily visiting a gaixleu at Colbourne, Isle of 

 Wight, for thirty years, and continuing to do so at the date of publication. 



