320 
LARIM. 
'' The species was first distinctly characterized in the ' Eauna 
Boreali- Americana/ of Bichardson and Swainson, in 1831. It 
is mentioned in that work (p. 425) as ' common in all parts of 
the far countries, where it associates with the terns, and is dis- 
tinguished by its peculiar shrill and plaintive cry/ Mr. Audubon 
(' Orn. Biog/ vol. iv. p, 212, 1838) informs us, that he first 
met with this bird in August, when crossing the Ohio at Cincin- 
nati, and subsequently shot a specimen in November, on the 
Mississippi, a few miles below the mouth of the Arkansas. In 
Chesapeake Bay after the first of April, and at the harbour of 
Passamoudy (Maine) in May, he saw them in great abund- 
ance : — at the latter place his son killed seventeen at one dis- 
charge of his double-barreled gun. It is added that 'none of 
them were observed on any part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
or on the coast of Labrador or Newfoundland, and that in winter 
this species is common in the harbour of Charleston, but none 
are seen at that season near the mouths of the Mississippi/ This 
author subsequently 'found in London a pair of these birds 
* * * which had been brought from Greenland/ 
" The occurrence of this North American bird in Europe 
affords another opportunity for speculating whether birds can 
really cross the Atlantic, which some of the best ornithologists 
in Europe did not, at least a few years ago, believe to be possible. 
In my opinion, as fully stated on former occasions when noticing 
the occurrence of American birds in Ireland, the presumptive or 
circumstantial evidence is all in favour of their having really 
crossed the ocean.’* 
" In the estuary, about three miles from where the Larus Bona- 
partii was shot, the first individual also of 
Larus Sabini , 
known to visit the European coasts, was met with ; and at the 
opposite side of the bay a second example was afterwards ob- 
“* See Yellow-billed American Cuckoo ( Coccyzus Americanus) in ‘Annals,’ 
vol. ix. p. 226, and American Bittern ( Botaurus lentiginosus) in same work, 
vol. xvii. p. 94. — [In Vols. I. and II. ‘Nat. Hist. Ireland.’] 
