211 
I tlroiiped on the ice-floe below, and the rest of them betook tliem- 
selves well out of shot. Feeling tolerably certain that we should 
find their nesting-place somewhere in the neighbourhood, we 
(piickly descended from the llurgomastei-s’ gallery, and picking up 
the dead Ivory Gull, proceeded to examine other parts of the 
island. The pack setting in rapidly against the island obliged us 
to desist in our search, and forced us to make our way back to the 
ship, through broken-up floe-ice. During the rest of the time we 
remained at Capo Sabine the weather, and the position of the 
pack-ice, prevented any other opportunity of my visiting Ilrevoort 
Island, but, in all probability, Pagopliiln eburnea breeds in that 
locality. 
Capt. Constantino John I’hipp.s, afterward.s first Lonl Mulgravo, 
in an appcndi.x to his account of a voyage towards the Xorth Pole 
by way of Spitzbergen, undertaken in the year 1773 , describes the 
Ivory Gull under the name of Larus ebuniens. His description, 
“ niveits, iiimiaciilntns, pedibus plumbeo-cinereio,' is hi^hlv 
applicable to the adult bird, than which no more lovely object is to 
be met with in the frozen regions of the north. So exquisitely white 
IS its plumage, tliat when contrasted against the snow, as it'wheels 
over the floes, it seems even a shade more immaculate ; and when 
hovering amidst the falling snow-flakes, arrests the sight In- its 
appearance of still greater purity. This of course is owing to 
snow taking its apparent colour from the light and slmdes 
Lonl Mulgravo has, I think, hardly done justice to the accuracy 
of Martens, for he remarks that the description of the Rath she rr 
cannot apply to his Ivory Gull. With the exception of the 
inaccuracy about the absence of a hind-toe, already referred to, it 
would, I think, bo impossible to correlate any other birel of tlie 
Arctic regions, but the Ivory Gull with the Rathsherr of Marten.s. 
• revised by Captain Feilden wlio 
IS absent with his Regiment in Natal. [Ed. j ’ 
