THE COMMON GULL. 
355 
middle to the end of May 1848, great numbers of their eggs were 
found. 
I requested that a few eggs would be procured during the en- 
suing season in proof of the species, and they were obtained for 
me ; — genuine eggs of L. canus. But with them I received the 
grievous information that in two days eight hundred and fifty of 
their eggs and those of terns were collected by my friend and his 
assistants. By far the greater number were those of the gull, 
as it was early in the season; this bird laying three weeks 
sooner than the tern ($. Jiirundo). 
The north of Europe — coast of Norway, &c.~ -is the great 
breeding-haunt of the common gull. 
In the summer of 1826, I remarked immature gulls of this 
species in Holland ; very far up the Rhine ; about the lakes of 
Switzerland, and what seemed to be they also, near the shores of 
Italy. When proceeding by steam-packet, on the 13th and 14th 
of April, 1841, along the coast from Leghorn to near the Bay 
of Naples, a number of gulls, which appeared to be L. canus , 
were seen about the vessel : all that I particularly observed were 
immature — no other Larus was within view during these two 
days. On the 16th, gulls, apparently L. canus , were seen in 
the Straits of Messina. When sailing in H.M.S. Beacon , from 
Malta to the Morea — 21st to the 28th of April — similar gulls 
were in view as we approached within twenty-five miles of land, 
towards Navarino, and became numerous at the entrance of the 
bay; where they seemed to have breeding-places in the cliffs. 
A note dated Syra, May 7th, is to the effect that the only 
bird now common in the harbour here is a gull like L. canus in 
size and colour, but a dead specimen which I saw on the beach 
differed from this species in having on the lower mandible 
a red spot, like that of the herring-gull; all the rest of the 
bill was yellow ; the upper plumage was of a darker blue than in 
L. canus ; the tarsi yellow as in the adult L. canus at this season. 
All I have seen here, during two or three days, were adult birds, 
of which small flocks were always in view; — subsequently immature 
birds were met with. I do not find in Temminck's or Degland's 
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