364 
LARIM. 
was four inches and a half broad to the points of the toes on 
either side. A bird shot at the Giant’s Causeway, was, excepting 
a small Idolea , filled with univalve mollusca, portion of a Patella 
carulea , a few small whole shells of Littorina rudis , three small 
perfect specimens of Purpura lapillus half an inch in length, 
and about seventy examples of the inner central column of full- 
grown individuals of the same species.^ 
The circumstance of gulls retiring from the sea inland at a 
particular time of the tide, and resting among the heath, is agree- 
ably noticed and accounted for by Mr. Lawrence Edmonston, of 
Zetland, in one of his very interesting and well- written papers in 
the f Edinburgh Philosophical Journal’ (vol. vii. 1st series, 1822), 
entitled “ Remarks on the Larus parasiticus , &c.” I have ob- 
served limited numbers of the gull under consideration, to do so 
about wild breeding-haunts, as Horn Head, &c. Erom Belfast 
Bay, however, whence herons, curlews, and other grallatorial 
birds retire during the time that the tide covers the mud banks, 
neither the herring nor other gulls leave it. They are content 
to float upon the rising waters, and to fall with them until 
left upon the banks again. The herring-gull frequents inland 
lakes ; in the autumn as well as winter I have observed it about 
Lough Neagh, &c. 
A gull of this species, captured on the Mew Island, lived, ac- 
cording to my informant (its captor there), nearly twenty years 
at the inn of Honaghadee, where, after having been eighteen 
years, it laid two eggs.f Dr. Harvey, of Cork, stated in a com- 
munication to the f Zoologist,’ dated June 17th, 1846 (p. 1395) — 
“ My friend, Robert Parker, Esq., of Carrigrohan, in this neigh- 
bourhood, has had a pair of herring-gulls (. L . argentatus , Lin.) in 
confinement since they were taken from the nest, now three or 
* Dr. J. L. Drummond has remarked to me that of all the native birds dissected 
by him, the gulls had the most orange-coloured fat. 
f Montagu, in the Supplement to his ‘ Ornithological Dictionary,’ gives a most 
interesting account of a herring-gull which, at the date of his writing, had been thir- 
teen years in his menagerie. Mr. Hewitson, on the authority of the Rev. W. D. Fox, 
gives an instance of one of these birds daily visiting a garden at Colbourne, Isle of 
Wight, for thirty years, and continuing to do so at the date of publication. 
