370 
GREAT TERN. 
They have, however, great powers of wing and strength in 
the muscles of the neck, which enable them to make such 
sudden and violent plunges, and that from a considerable 
height too, headlong on their prey, which they never seize 
but with their bills. In the evening, I have remarked, as 
they retired from the upper parts of the bays, rivers, and 
inlets, to the beach for repose, about breeding time, that each 
generally carried a small fish in his bill. 
As soon as the young are able to fly, they lead them to the 
sandy shoals and ripples where fish are abundant ; and, while 
they occasionally feed them, teach them by their example to 
provide for themselves. They sometimes penetrate a great 
way inland, along the courses of rivers ; and are occasionally 
seen about all our numerous ponds, lakes, and rivers, most 
usually near the close of the summer. 
This species inhabits Europe as high as Spitzbergen ; is 
found on the arctic coasts of Siberia and Kamtschatka, and 
also on our own continent as far north as Hudson’s Bay. In 
New^ England, it is called by some the Mackerel Gull. It 
retires from all these places, at the approach of winter, to 
more congenial seas and seasons. 
The Great Tern is fifteen inches long, and thirty inches 
in extent; bill, reddish yellow, sometimes brilliant crimson, 
slightly angular on the lower mandible, and tipt with black ; 
whole upper part of the head, black, extending to a point half 
way down the neck behind, and including the eyes ; sides of 
the neck, and whole lower parts, pure white ; wing-quills, 
hoary, as if bleached by the weather, long and pointed ; whole 
back, scapulars, and wing, bluish white, or very pale lead 
colour ; rump and tail-coverts, white ; tail, long, and greatly 
forked, the exterior feathers being three inches longer than 
the adjoining ones, the rest shortening gradually for an inch 
and a half to the middle ones, the whole of a pale lead colour ; 
the outer edge of the exterior ones, black ; legs and webbed 
feet, brilliant red lead ; membranes of the feet, deeply scal- 
loped ; claws, large and black, middle one the largest. The 
