392 



ME. H. SAUNDEES ON THE GEOGRAPHICAL 



record being that of a young bird obtained between the Philip- 

 pines and the Sandwich Islands, to which Bonaparte gave the 

 name of Lestris Jiardyi ; this example is in the Berlin Museum, 

 where I have recently examined it. Eichardson's Skua has a more 

 southern breeding-range, nesting as far down as the Orkney and 

 Shetland Islands, whence it goes in winter as far as the Cape of 

 Grood Hope, and in all probability up the east coast of Africa to 

 Persia and the coast of Scind, being apj^arently the species de- 

 scribed from there by Mr. A. O. Hume as S. asiaticus. On the 

 Atlantic side of America it goes to Eio Janeiro, being apparently 

 the species described by Solauder, in his unpublished MS. in the 

 British Museum, under the names of Larus fuliginosus and L. ni- 

 gricans ; and it probably visits the Pacific coasts, as a solitary ex- 

 ample which I refer to this species was obtained by Mr. BuUer 

 in the Province of "Wellington, New Zealand. Both these spe- 

 cies possess great powers of flight, so that they are able to pursue 

 and rob, not only the smaller Grulls, but also the Terns ; and as 

 the latter are found in an uninterrupted succession throughout 

 the whole of the indicated range, there is at once an assignable 

 reason for great extension in the range of the latter of these two 

 Skuas. A larger and stouter species, with broad-pointed central 

 tail-feathers, ^. pomatorhinus, with an Arctic breeding-range 

 nearly identical with that of S. parasiticus, has nearly as exten- 

 sive a southern range as S. crepidatus, immature birds having 

 occurred in West Africa down to Walwich Bay, and once at Cape 

 York, North Australia ; whilst in the North Pacific it has oc- 

 curred at the Prybilov Islands, and the ' Challenger ' Exj^edition 

 obtained a fine adult specimen in Inosima, Japan. In powers of 

 flight this bird is nearly if not quite equal to its two congeners, 

 and the same causes probably influence its distribution. 



But now, on leaving these three perfectly distinct species, we come 

 to three others whose distinctions are comparatively trifling, at 

 the same time that the gradations of diff'erences and geographical 

 distribution are very interesting. The northern species, S. catar- 

 rhactes, whose breeding-range stretches from the coast of Norway, 

 the Earoes, and Iceland, away through the Nearctic region and 

 the Pacific, appears to be nowhere numerically abundant, and is 

 fast becoming exterminated in Europe. It is a bold, predacious, 

 but somewhat heavy bird, addicted at times to the slaughter of 

 lambs, and deriving its main sustenance from plundering the Grulls, 

 especially the Kittiwake {Uissa tridactyla)^ upon which, more- 



