THE ROSEATE TERN, 
275 
other two species, I cannot bnt think that a number more of the 
eggs examined must have been those of the roseate.* On seeing 
the boat's crew landing to collect eggs, we remarked to our boat- 
men that the season was now so far advanced that many of them 
might be found incubated ; but it was replied, that, on the con- 
trary, they were all fresh-laid that morning, the island being not 
only daily visited by egg-gatherers, but that boys sometimes 
remain there all night, sleeping under the shelter of a rock, that 
they may be the first at the gathering on the following morning. 
So incessantly are the poor birds robbed of their eggs, that our 
boatmen stated they can never bring forth their young until the 
time of hay- harvest, when the people are too much occupied to 
molest them.fi 
The birds themselves, too, suffered much this year. In one fore- 
noon at the end of May a party butchered not less than fifty, of 
which about a dozen were the roseate, and all were afterwards 
flung away as useless. A dozen, all arctic, were killed on the 
1 st of June, and subsequently four of the roseate were sent from 
the island to a gentleman of my acquaintance. Our boatmen 
stated, that they remembered these birds more than ten times as 
numerous as at present. Their diminution is owing to their 
eggs being more than ever sought after, and to the increasing 
wanton persecution to which the birds themselves are sub- 
jected in being killed by heartless shooters, who have no object in 
view but their destruction. 
I have been much pleased by remarking the following trait in 
* Mr. Selby, who has had the best of opportunities for examining these eggs, 
does not mention any difference in form between those of the roseate and arctic 
species ; but remarks that the eggs of the former much resemble those of the latter, 
“ but are a little larger, and with the ground-colour usually more inclining to cream- 
white or pale wood-brown” (vol. ii. p. 471). 
Eggs, represented in Hewitson’s work as those of the common and arctic tern, I 
have frequently found in the same nest. This author admits that it is quite impos- 
sible to distinguish the eggs of these two species from each other with certainty ; 
but that those of the arctic are generally the smaller of the two. 
f Mr. Knox, in his most pleasing ‘ Ornithological Rambles in Sussex,’ at p. 244, 
mentions a person having had a peculiar breed of dogs, which he successfully trained 
to hunt for the eggs of terns, ring-dotterels, and lapwings on the coast of that 
county ; but it is to bo hoped that the breed has become extinct, never to be 
renewed. 
T 2 
