m 
LARlDiE. 
NA TA TORES. 
LARI DAE. 
LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL. 
Larus fuscus. 
PLATE CXXXIX. FIG. III. 
Montagu says that on the island of Romsey, on the 
western coast of England, where the Lesser Black-backed 
and herring Gulls breed together, the former bears a very 
small proportion, about one in twenty, to the latter; upon 
the Fern Islands, however, on our Northumberland coast, 
it is just the reverse, there being a very few pairs of 
the herring gull among the Lesser Black-backed, which 
breed there in great numbers. This species appears to 
prefer those islands which are the most bare and barren, 
and upon which there is the least herbage; and, though 
they have their choice, very few of them deposit their eggs 
upon the grass,— and yet they rarely lay them without 
making a tolerably thick nest for their reception : it is of 
grass, loosely bundled together in large pieces, and placed 
in some slight depression or hollow of the rock. Amongst 
upwards of a hundred that I examined, one or two only 
had small pieces of sea-weed mixed with the other mate¬ 
rial. They lay two or three eggs, varying in every tint 
of colour. The first figure of the plate, though represent¬ 
ing another species, will apply to this as well; they are, 
in most cases, identical with those of the herring gull, but 
are frequently rather less. This species will frequently 
