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not recorded from China, though it is said to occur in Japan and is figured in the ' Fauna 

 Japonica.' Forster records it from New Caledonia and Easter Island ; Peale from the Paumotu 

 group, Rosa and Honden Islands ; Bonaparte states that he examined two obtained by M. E. 

 Jardin in the Marquesas; and Dr. Finsch states (J. f. O. 1872, p. 56) that Dr. Graffe sent a 

 specimen from Upola, Samoa Islands. Gould says that it is generally distributed over the seas 

 surrounding Australia. Gilbert found it breeding on the Houtmann's Abrolhos in December, and 

 Macgillivray in Torres Straits in May and June. 



On the American coasts it is found from the Southern United States down to Chili, and is 

 extremely common on the Florida Keys. I once saw it off the coast of Texas ; Grayson obtained 

 it on the Pacific coast of Mexico; Mr. Osbert Salvin obtained (Ibis, 1864, p. 385) a specimen in 

 Curlew Cay, in British Honduras ; and Philippi and Landbeck record it from Chili. According 

 to Dr. von Martens one was shot by Dr. Cole in Bermuda in October 1846. Wedderburn picked 

 one up on the shore for dead ; but it proved to be alive, and escaped out of his hands. In October 

 1854 another was caught on the shore in an exhausted state. It has also been met with on the 

 island of Cuba, in Jamaica, at St. Croix, and at St. Thomas, near which last island it breeds 

 numerously. Dr. Elliott Coues also states that it occurs on the Pacific coast; Lichtenstein records 

 it from the Aleutian Islands. 



I have had no opportunity of observing the habits of this Tern personally ; but several 

 ornithologists have visited its breeding-haunts, and have published the results of their observa- 

 tions. Audubon, who visited the Tortugas, where this species breeds in vast numbers, to observe 

 its breeding-habits, has published some interesting notes on its nidification, from which (B. Am. 

 vii. p. 250) I cull the following : — " On landing I felt for a moment as if the birds would raise 

 me from the ground, so thick were they all round, and so quick the motion of their wings. 

 Their cries were indeed deafening ; yet not more than half of them took wing on our arrival, 

 those which rose being chiefly male birds, as we afterwards ascertained. We ran across the 

 naked beach, and as we entered the thick cover before us and spread in different directions 

 we might at every step have caught a sitting bird or one scrambling through the bushes to 

 escape from us. Some of the sailors, who had more than once been there before, had provided 

 themselves with sticks, with which they knocked clown the birds as they flew thick around and 

 over them. In less than half an hour more than a hundred Terns lay dead in a heap, and a 

 number of baskets were filled to the brim with eggs. We then returned on board, and declined 

 disturbing the rest any more that night. The next morning Mr. Ward told me that great 

 numbers of the Terns left their island at two o'clock, flew off towards the sea, and returned a 

 little before day, or about four o'clock. This I afterwards observed to be regularly the case, 

 unless there happened to blow a gale — a proof that this species sees as well during the night as 

 by day, when they also go to sea in search of food for themselves and their young. In this 

 respect they differ from the Sterna stolida, which, when overtaken by darkness, even when land 

 is only a few miles distant, alight on the water, and frequently on the yards of vessels, where, if 

 undisturbed, they sleep until the return of clay. Sterna fuliginosa never forms a nest of any 

 sort, but deposits its eggs in a slight cavity, which it scoops in the sand under the trees." He 

 also remarks that this species seldom alights on the water, where it seems incommoded by its 

 long tail, and that its flight is not so buoyant and wavering as that of many of the Terns, but 



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