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POPULAE HISTOEY OF BIHDS. 
The Gulls (Laeid^e) form a widely-distributed family of 
birds^ residing constantly on the sea or in its immediate 
vicinity, and hardly ever leaving it, except in very stormy 
weather, when they come to land to look for food. They 
are distinguished by a rather long beak, which is compressed 
and pointed, the upper mandible being arcuated towards 
the tip, while the lower has a projecting angle on its inferior 
edge ; the nostrils are placed near the middle, and are long, 
narrow, and pierced quite through ; they have a good-sized 
tail, which, with their powerful wings, enables them often 
to ^^beat against the wind/^ their legs are longish and well 
set on their bodies, and, the webs being comparatively short, 
they are good walkers, swimming, flying, and walking with 
equal ease; and, according to Sir John Eichardson, one 
species at least can perch. That intrepid traveller and able 
naturalist, on his last Arctic Searching Expedition, observed 
on the Bear Lake River, the pretty little Bonapartean Gull 
[Xema Bonapartii), He says that ^^this species arrives 
very early in the season, before the ground is denuded of 
snow, and seeks its food in the first pools of water which 
form on the borders of Great Bear Lake, and wherein it 
finds multitudes of minute crustacean animals and larvae of 
insects. It flies in flocks, and builds its nests in a colony 
