Family LARIDAE.
No cere to the bill. Caeca small and functionless. Sternum with two notches on each side of the posterior margin.
* In adopting the arrangement of Mr. Howard Saundera, whose valuable work of many years on this order has recently been crowned by his British Museum Catalogue, I accept his decision without feeling quite satisfied that a different classification may not ultimately have to be adopted, as indeed he himself suggests. There is much to be said in favour of making the Skuas a subfamily of Laridae, uniting Larinae and Sterninae as a single subfamily, and raising the Skimmers to the rank of a separate family, Rhynchopidae ; or else, as recently proposed by Mr. Beddard (P. Z. S. 1896, p. 303), classing all four groups, Gulls, Terns, Skimmers and Skuas, as subfamilies of Laridae.
The Laridae may be divided into three subfamilies, thus distinguished :—
a. The upper mandible longer than the lower…………………Larinae, p. 29S.
b. The mandibles of equal length…………………Sterninae, p. 300.
c. Bill excessively compressed, the lower mandible much longer than the upper…………………Rhynchopinae, p. 327.
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