The Roseate Tern. 33 



portions of the coasts of the United Kingdom for the purposes of reproduction. 

 It is an oceanic Tern, nowhere numerically abundant, and remains with us for a 

 very short time, being the last of the Terns to arrive and the very first to leave, 

 and the young are, consequently, very rare in collections. It is, moreover, unusually 

 intolerant of interference, and if the Common Tern fS. flvviatilisj becomes too 

 numerous in its favourite haunts, it yields, almost without a struggle, and goes 

 elsewhere. This has been proved, by Dr. Bureau, on the north-west coast of 

 France. In 1890, I was surprised to find, at Geneva and Lausanne, examples 

 which had been obtained on Lake Leman, in May; and I assumed that these 

 were occasional migrants deflected from a supposed line of migration up the 

 Rhone Valley from the Western Mediterranean, where, as already stated, the species 

 was known to occur irregularly. No one has yet obtained the Roseate Tern on 

 the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, the north-west shores of Africa, or on the 

 Canary Islands ; but it occurs in Madeira, as well as in the Azores. Passing 

 westward, we find it in the Bermudas ; the West Indian Islands, generally from 

 the vicinity of Venezuela upwards ; and along the east side of America up to 

 Massachusetts ; not on the Pacific side, even where the continent is narrowest. 

 Returning to the eastern hemisphere, the Roseate Tern has been taken at the 

 Cape of Good Hope and in South-eastern Africa ; breeds on the Mascarene Islands, 

 Ceylon and the Andamans ; can be traced by Tenasserim, Malaysia, and the 

 Moluccas to Australia, and even to New Caledonia — its most eastern breeding 

 place ; while it ranges along the China Seas to the Loo-choo Islands, wandering 

 to Hitachi, Japan. 



" Now it will be seen," continues Mr. Saunders, " that there are two very 

 important gaps in its distribution ; no authentic specimens being known from 

 West African waters, between Madeira and the Cape of Good Hope, on the one 

 side, or between the Mediterranean and the Indian Seas on the other. But when 

 — as Mr. Whittaker has shown — a colony exists on the coast of Tunisia, it seems not 

 improbable that the line of continuity should be sought eastward, along the coast 

 of Africa, and southward, down the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. It is quite 

 conceivable that the Roseate Tern may not breed on the Islands of the Red Sea, 

 because there, as well as at the Laccadive Islands and along the Malabar coast, 

 we find— thrust in like a wedge — S. albigena, an allied species, which may prove 

 inimical to 5. dougalli, just as 5. fliiviatilis is, under certain conditions, further 

 north. But it strikes me now that if a look-out is kept for the Roseate Tern 

 along the Red Sea, in April and again in September, not omitting the Persian 

 Gulf — for the bird may perhaps try the Euphrates Valley route — we ought before 

 long to learn more about the somewhat mysterious distribution of this species. 



