1895-96-] Gossip about Gulls. 165 



sharp beak was always ready. Like Cora, he was a splendid 

 watch-dog, and guarded my little city back-garden as zealously 

 as she had sentinelled the old garden at home. " Wandered " 

 cats and bad boys coining over the wall did not like being 

 " peached " upon if they appeared in sight. Probably the cats 

 talked scandal about scorie when they met on some neighbour- 

 ing roof, but they never ventured to attack him personally. 

 The boys did, and if their aim had been as sure as their bad 

 feeling, his days had been numbered. I did my best to pro- 

 tect him, but when going abroad I feared for his life ; so — 

 with much regret — my scorie and I parted. "When I saw him 

 last he was enjoying himself on an artificial lake in Finsbury 

 Park, London ; but I was told that a year later he and some 

 others took wing and disappeared. No doubt such creatures 

 prefer freedom with its risks and privations to confinement, 

 even with luxuries attached. 



When crossing the Atlantic, I was much interested in the 

 gulls which followed us from Britain and those which met us 

 from America. Our familiar home birds came a long way, at 

 first in great numbers, but day by day less, until not a straggler 

 was to be seen, and I missed their bright noisy presence. When 

 the last of them had vanished I noted one or two gulls 

 hovering about our path quite unlike those which had escorted 

 us from home. The new-comers were almost black on the 

 back, and their wings were not so rounded or so graceful as 

 ours. They were more shy, and almost silent. They had a 

 furtive, almost shrinking, way of hanging around. Their num- 

 bers were increased as we proceeded, but I heard none of the 

 interesting talk amongst them which I had been accustomed 

 to hear among gulls. An occasional exclamation from some 

 solitary individual was all. In the Gulf of St Lawrence I 

 recognised some of the old friends of the tribe again, cheery 

 and confident as at home ; but they were not in large flocks, 

 and I could not hear of any gullery in that neighbourhood, 

 nor did I see any young scories. It was the same thing on 

 the Pacific coast ; there I saw black-backs and other varieties, 

 but no rocks alive with seafowl, as in our Shetland Islands. 



In the museums of Montreal and Victoria, Vancouver, were 

 specimens of all our gulls — the aristocratic skua, the stately 

 glaucus, the lovely sea-mew, the common gull, the fairy sea- 



