ICELAND GULL. 
185 
hardly remember ever seeing any bird equal to it in this 
respect, — a circumstance which, together with that of the 
singular compactness of its plumage, and voracious avidity 
for carrion, first induced me to suspect this marine vulture 
to be a native of the higher latitudes. This conjecture was 
confirmed by accidentally falling in, at London, with a spe- 
cimen of this gull, brought home by the Arctic expedition 
under Captain Ross, which agreed with the description I 
had given some years before, of the adult Iceland Gull ; 
with this trifling difference, that there were scarcely any 
grey streaks to be observed on the head or neck, — a differ- 
ence which might, indeed, refer to age, or climate, or sea- 
son, but certainly could not affect the identity of species. 
If the opinions, then, which I have suggested regarding 
this gull be adopted, they will present to ornithologists, of 
a numerous and very interesting genus, a well-defined spe- 
cies, before obscurely known, assuredly undescribed, as a 
British bird, and may authorise the trivial name of Larus 
Islandicus^ by which I have proposed to distinguish it, aS 
expressive, both of its Arctic haunts, and of the vulgar 
appellation by which it is known in the Zetland Islands. 
