356 
LARIDiE. 
works any indication of a gull differing, as here described, from 
L. canus. On the 10th of June, at a small rocky islet with high 
cliffs, to the north-east of Port Naussa, island of Paros, I re- 
marked the same species, and another like the L. argentatus : it 
was just such a locality as the two kinds would select for breed- 
ing quarters in the north of Ireland. 
The Bishop of Norwich, in his f Pamiliar History of Birds ' 
(vol. ii. p. 240), gives an interesting account of gulls, as observed 
by himself at the South Stack, off Holyhead. Mr. James Wilson, 
in his f Yoyage round the coast of Scotland and the Isles' (vol. i. 
p. 336), mentions a ludicrous encounter between gulls (species 
not mentioned) and young goats in a small island in Loch Lax- 
ford, from which the goats were routed, in consequence it was 
supposed of their encroachments on the nests of the birds. In 
the ‘Becreations of Christopher North' (vol. ii. p. 181), we find 
gulls commented on in the author's own eloquent manner. 
THE HEEBING-GULL. 
Silvery Gull. 
Larus argentatus , Brunn. 
Is common around the coast throughout the year. 
Breeding -haunts. 
Under L. canus a few observations were made respecting’ the 
frequency of the breeding-haunts of the herring-gull around our 
coast, compared with those of the so-called common gull. Pro- 
ceeding from Belfast Bay, northward, we have seen (June 12th, 
1834) several hundreds of herring- gulls about their nests at the 
range of precipitous rocks just outside its entrance, called the 
Gobbins, and all but one were in full plumage. Of late years 
herring-gulls have bred here in great numbers ; — in 1849, it was 
estimated that at least 1,000 pair bred. In the very early spring 
of that year, about a fourth of the number which breed here had 
