ON THE FARRALONES. 



FEEDING IIAIilTS OF GULLS OX THE PACIFIC COAST.' 



"For of all runes and rhymes 

 Of all times, 

 Best like I the ocean's dirges, 

 When the old harper heaves and rocks, 



His hoary locks 

 Flowing and flashing in the surges." 

 — Henry W, Longfellow, Tlie Saga of Kimj Olaf. 



The Farralones are a group of rough and barren islands thirty 

 miles out from San Francisco. No tree grows on them, and 

 scarcely a plant, except the long, spongy weed called Farralone 

 weed, can hold its own against the sea storms in that infer- 

 tile soil. On one of the islands is a lighthouse. No other 

 houses are there, and few men except those who gather eggs 

 for the market ever visit the place. 



Thus being comparatively undisturbed, birds nest here in 

 vast numbers. There are great colonies of cormorants, black 

 as midnight, stretching up their long necks; companies of 

 tufted puffins with their gay red and green bills and yellow 

 ear-plumes curling like a ram's horns ; murres by the myriad, 

 lifting their brown necks above their snowy breasts; pigeon 

 guillemots, much like the " sea pigeon " of the East ; Cassin's 

 auklets and petrels mingle wdth them according to their na- 

 tures, solitary or in companies ; and everywhere the snowy 



1 Facts drawn from Dr. Walter E. Bryant's " Birds of the Farralones " and 

 H. W. Taylor's " Story of the Farralones." 



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