LARUS PHILADELPHIA, BONAPARTe's GULL. 657 



The specimen examined was shot while feeding, and the whoJe digestive apparatus 

 was in full play. (Esophagus measures between six and seven inches in length, pre- 

 senting the usual characteristics of muscularity and dilatability. It was cuntractud 

 and longitudinally plicate to within an inch of the proventriculus, where it was dis- 

 tended with an enormous wad of coleopterous and hynienopterous insects ; this part of 

 the canal being, of course, devoid of rugai, and its walls thin and tense. The dilh-rencu 

 in appearance of the proventricular portion of the tube was very marked. Its color 

 was gray; the mucous membrane soft velvety to the touch, without ruga;, marked 

 everywhere with thickly aggregated puncta. The solvent follicles were <-o"n/crf, and 

 found to amount to 1,643. The gastric zone was 0.6 broad. The insects in this portion 

 of the canal were in a perfect state of integrity, as in the oesophagus, Ijut were much 

 softened. Gizzard of proportionate size, and with the general characteristics of the 

 Larinai. 



Intestine 24 inches from pylorus to anus. Besides the ordinary duodenal fold, there 

 is another which commences 4 or 5 inches from the cceca, aud runs up behind the giz- 

 zard as high as the O-'sophagus, and then descends in a pretty straight line to the cceca. 

 The cceca are hardly 0.1'^ loug, but are broad and capacious, with rounded free extrem- 

 ities. They lie closely apposed to the gut, 0.75 of an inch from the cloaca. Cloaca, as 

 usual, large, capacious, globular. Its posterior division is small, but marked by 

 a well-developed ridge of mucous membrane. Orifices of urinary and seminal ducts 

 in the usual position. 



Lobes of liver of nearly equal size, 1.75 inches long; the right is a little the most 

 attenuated, left the thickest. They are connected by a broad, thiu band of glandular 

 substance. 



Kidneys chiefly divided into three lobes, of which the superior is the largest and 

 most convex ; the infciior smallest ; the central connecting lobe irregular in outline. 



Trachea 4 inches long, flattened above, tapering and cylindrical below ; its rings; 

 weak and cartilaginous, numbering about 120. The sterno-trachealis inserted only 0.3. 

 above the lower larynx. A single pair of inferior laryngeal inserted into the fb'st 

 bronchial half ring. Bronchial rings abut 22. 



Very numerous specimens of this species now before me exhibit little variation jn 

 colors other than those dependent on age and season ; though, as will be seen from the 

 preceding paragraphs, its normal changes of plumage are very great. The differences 

 are chiefly in the amount of the narrow edging of the black of the tips of the prima- 

 ries, which runs along to their bases ; in the amount of black on the seventh and eighth 

 primaries ; and in the size of the white apices of all 8f them. The difrerence iu size 

 is more notable ; the specimens being marked according to collectors' measurements 

 as from 12 to 14.50 in total length, though I think that so great a di.screpancy may be 

 accounted for by supposing slightly different methods of measurement, and errors of 

 carelessness and otherwise. I have never seen a specimen so large as is indicated by 

 Richardson, viz, 15.60 inches. The bills differ somewhat in stoutness; in the young 

 they are always slenderer and weaker. The notch toward the extremities of the tomia 

 is always quite distinct. 



By both Audubon and Bonaparte the female of the present species is said to have a 

 brown instead of a black head ; and Audubon's plate shows an entirely different color 

 of the hood of the female from that of the male. This statement is at variance with 

 Richardson's account aud with the experience of authors, except those two above 

 mentioned, which has invariably shown the hoods of the two sexes to be colored alike. 

 I have never seen any brown-headed examples ; and as the species is so abundant that 

 the difference, if it really existed, would have been readily detected, I think it is safe to 

 assert that it does not. Still it is difficult to see how both Audubon and Bonaparte fell 

 into such au error, and I can offer no explanation of the matter. 



Bibliography. — The first specific name of this species is, as proven by Mr. Lawrence, 

 philddelphia of Ord. "The slender aud tern-like form of the bill probably induced Mr. 

 Ord to put it in Sterna." Until the name of Mr. Ord's was revived by Mr. Lawrence, 

 the species almost universally received the appellation of honaparlei, imposed upon it 

 by Richardson in 1831. It was referred to the genus Chrwcocejihalus, by Bruch, in 1855. 

 Bonaparte in his American Ornithology, and in his Synopsis of 1828, before the intro- 

 duction of Richardson's specific name, referred the bird very eironeously to the capis- 

 tratus of Temminek, which is quite another thing. In his subsequent works he adopts 

 the name bestowed in honor of himself, referring the bird to the genera X'-ma and 

 Gavia, I quote "Larua melanurus Ord" as a synonynj of the young, on the authority 

 of Bonaparte. The Larus melanorhynchus of Temminek is, by Dr. Scblegel, considered 

 as referring to this species. By other authors it is placed as a synonym of " cucullatus." 

 L. subuUrostris may belong here rather than to franldini. 



No one of our species is more widely dispersed than this. Go where 



we may in North America, the pretty bird m;iy be seen at one or another 



season, if we are not too far from any considerable body of water. The 



Gull holds its own from the Labrador crags, against which the waves of 



i2 



