216 
LAUGHING GULL. 
used, and not the wings, as in the guillemot and auk tribes, 
and by their situation so far behind, and their little deviation 
from the line of the body, the bird is enabled to propel itself 
in the water with great velocity, in a straight line, as well as 
turn with astonishing quickness.” 
LAUGHING GULL.*_LARUS ATRICILLA. 
Plate LXXIV. Fig. 4. 
Larus atrlcaia, Linn. Syst. ed. 10, tom. i. p. 136, 5. Gmel. Syst. i. p. 600, 8. 
Ind. Orn. p. 813, 4 Laughing gull, Cateshy, i. pi. 89. Lath. Gen. Syn. 
iii. p. 383, 12. — Arct. ZooL No. 454. — La mouette rieuse, Lriss. vi. p. 192, 13, 
pi. 18, fig. 1. — Mouette a capuchon plombe, Temm. Man. d' Orn. p. 779. 
PeaWs Museum, No. 3881. 
LAR VS ATRICILLA.— LiNNMVS.j 
Larus ridibundus, Ord. 1 edit, of Supp. p. 89.— Larus atricilla, JBonap. Synop. 
p. 359. 
Length, seventeen inches; extent, three feet six inches; 
bill, thighs, legs, feet, sides of the mouth, and eyelids, dark 
* Named in the plate, black-beaded gull. 
f This gull is the only one figured by Wilson, though several are mentioned 
in his list, and, no doubt, had he survived to complete his great undertaking, 
many others would have been both added and figured. I have introduced a short 
description of those which have been since noticed by writers on Arctic and North- 
ern zoology, but any observations will be confined, for the present, to the form 
now before us, perhaps more familiar in the black-headed gull of Britain. 
The gulls are distributed over the whole world, and present various forms. 
They are mostly, however, of graceful appearance, and perform their motions 
with ease and lightness ; their plumage is often of snowy whiteness, or tinged 
with a pale blush, adding to its delicacy. By the poets they are employed as 
emblems of purity, when riding buoyantly on the waves, and weaving a sportive 
dance, or as accessaries to the horrors of a storm, by their shrieks and wild pier- 
cing cries. In their manners they are the vultures of the ocean, feed indiscri- 
minately on fish, or on carrion, and frequently attack birds of inferior power. 
A dead horse, newly cast upon the beach, will present a picture little inferior 
to that drawn by Audubon of the American vultures, on the discovery of some 
putrid carcass. 
