THE ARCTIC TERN. 
293 
Audubon (vol. iv. p. 77) describes this tern as ascending the 
Mississippi, and frequenting large lakes bordering the Gulf of 
Mexico. 
THE ARCTIC TERN. 
Sterna macrura , Naum. (1819) 
,, arctica, Temm. (1820) 
Is a regular summer visitant, 
As recorded in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of Lon- 
don, in 1833. This species, noticed in connection with the 
roseate tern, came under my observation in June 1827, at which 
period, from being undescribed in any work on British birds, it 
was unknown to me, and believed to be an ornithological trea- 
sure, for its specific difference from S. hirundo was at once appa- 
rent. A little research, however, showed that the species was 
known to Mr. Selby, and included in his very interesting paper 
on the f Birds of the Earn Islands/ (published in January 1826, 
in the second volume of the ( Zoological Journal/) and with the 
additional information of Temminck, who had described the 
species in 1820, all was clear.* Eollowing the example of Mr. 
Selby, I drew up and read to the Belfast Natural History Society, 
in July 1827, a paper on the Birds of the Copeland Islands, off 
the coast of Down, in which the Sterna arctica, with the allied 
S. hirundo and S. Dougallii, were fully treated of : — some addi- 
tional distinctive characters to those given by that author were 
then pointed out, but now that the species is so much better 
known, it is unnecessary to repeat them here. 
Under the Roseate Tern, particulars of S. arctica at the Mew 
Island, Down, and the Skerries, off the north of Antrim, will be 
the observation that — “ They frequent rivers far remote from the sea, as for example 
the Rhene, about Strasburgh, where they were taken, described, and painted by Leo- 
nard Bultner, by the title of Bin Speurer, who tells us also that they build in gravelly 
and sandy places by the bank of the river, so that if it happen there be a floud in their 
breeding time, their eggs are marred, and their nests destroyed.” — p. 853. 
* Naumann, it appears, indicated the species in the Isis, in 1819, under the name 
of S. macrura . 
