WESTERN SILVER GULL. 
novce-hollandice. My criticisms of the Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. have been 
questioned by my Australian co-workers who pleaded, “ We were following 
that lead, were we wrong ? ” But blind acceptance can never be correct if 
science has to progress ; and if any Australian worker had examined the list of 
specimens given under Larus novce-hollandicB he would have noted that 
Saunders had no specimens, and therefore included this in the synonymy 
from a study of literature only. Further criticism of Masters’s diagnosis, so 
beautifully complete, would have enabled the Australian worker to come to 
only one conclusion : either Saunders was wrong or Masters’s diagnosis was 
incorrect. But Saunders had not seen the bird and therefore was not in a 
position to state that Masters was wrong. Therefore Saunders was wrong 
whether Masters’s diagnosis was incorrect or not, because he had concluded 
two things were alike with no basis, save suggestion, for that action. I hope 
this example will clearly show to the doubting Australians that it is really pos- 
sible for mistakes {which they, being the men on the spot, should have corrected) 
to be present in the Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum. 
Study of Masters’s description indicated that there must be some mistake 
in synonymising this with L. novce-hollandice while accepting Larus scopulinus 
as distinct. Masters deliberately compared his B. longirostris with B. jamesonii 
(as he called the New South Wales bird) and showed it to be bigger, with a 
longer bill and longer legs as well as the bill-coloration differing. Admitting 
that the bill-coloration pointed to a young bird, the measurements showed 
it to be larger than the Eastern adult, in the supposed young state. Was 
the adult not going to be larger ? But it was only guesswork when Saunders 
concluded that the biU-coloration indicated a juvenile, as had not a similar 
New Zealand Gull {L. hulleri Hutton) always a black bill ? 
As a matter of fact the black bill noted by Masters is a sign of imma- 
turity, but it also is to a great extent a feature of this subspecies. In a 
number of fully plumaged birds from West Australia the red bill is quite a 
different red, duU and deep, to that of the Eastern bird ; many others have 
dark bills. Out of an equal number of Eastern birds no fully-plumaged 
specimen has a dark bill and the majority have clear, light coral biUs. 
But the long bill and long legs are quite constant in the West Australian 
birds, adults giving culmen (exp.) 35-39, and tarsus 52-56, against Eastern 
birds culmen (exp.) 34-36 and tarsus 48-51 mm. 
Receipt of a nice series from Western Australia was not taken advantage 
of by Ogilvie-Grant {Ibis, 1910, p. 184), and the reinstatement of Masters’s 
B. longirostris was left to myself {Nov. Zool., Vol. XVIII, p. 211, 1912). 
The male described was collected by Mr. Tom Carter at Albany, South- 
west Australia, on December 21st, 1907. 
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