Note 347 — Chapter II · THE LANDFALL—FISHING FLEET—TO REYKJAVIK.

Baring-Gould (pp. 418, 419) gives four kinds of skuas—Catarrhactes (great skua), Pomatorhinus, Parasiticus (Arctic skua), and Buffoni. He makes “Kjór” the Icel. name for No. 3: I heard it so applied, but the Dictionary gives “a sea-bird of the tern kind; Hill’s Sterna.” We find the family mentioned by Pigafetta, the circumnavigator (A.D. 1519-22), under the libellous name “Cagassela” or “Caca uccello,” and he himself oftentimes witnessed the practice which survives in the term Stercorarius. It is an Antarctic as well as an Arctic “pirate of the seas.”