234 THE COMMON GULL 
mon Gull is mottled with brown, whereas it is greyish-white in the 
Black-Headed species. 
Gulls are, moreover, of material service, for they perform for the 
surface of the sea the same office which crustaceous animals do 
for its depths. Most of their time is spent in either flying or swim- 
ming about (they are no divers) in quest of food, which is of that 
nature that, if suffered to accumulate, more than one of our senses 
would be offended. All animal matter which, when life is extinct, 
rises to the surface, it is their especial province to clear away. To 
perform this necessary work, they have need of a quick eye and a 
voracious appetite. That they have the former in an eminent 
degree, any one may convince himself who, when taking a sea 
voyage, sees the vessel followed, as he often will, by a flock of Gulls. 
Let him fling overboard, into the foaming track of the ship, where 
his own eye can distinguish nothing, ever so small a portion of bread 
or other kind of food. That some one individual at least among 
the flock will have seen it fall and be able to descry it is certain ; 
now, probably, a general scramble will ensue, and the prize will be 
secured by the swiftest. Having tried this several times with 
the same result, let him throw over, instead of meat or bread, a bit 
of wood. Not a bird will come near even to examine it. I have 
often tried this experiment, and have met with but one result. To 
prove that the Gull is capable of consuming a large quantity of 
food, as well as quick-sighted,a single anecdote will suffice :—‘“A 
man who was shooting on the banks of the river Yare, seeing some- 
thing, which had the appearance of an eel half-swallowed, hanging 
from the mouth of a Gull which was flying overhead, fired at the 
bird, and on taking it up, found, not an eel, but—five tallow can- 
dles attached to a piece of thread, to the other end of which was 
fastened a sixth, the latter having been almost entirely swallowed. 
The candles were about twelve inches in length, with cotton wicks, 
such as are used on board the fishing boats, from the deck of which 
he had probably taken them”. The Gull, then, is not choice in its 
diet ; it is, in fact, omnivorous. It skims the deep for dead animal 
matter, follows the ship for offal thrown overboard, paces the shore 
in quest of molluscs and marine insects, flies inland in stormy 
weather (a specimen was once brought me which had been shot in 
Hertfordshire, twenty miles from the nearest navigable river) 
in winter and spring, and follows the plough along with Rooks and 
Jackdaws, alights on fields which have been manured with decom- 
posed fish, resorts to marshes for frogs and worms, and after an 
inundation repairs to the lately submersed ground, and picks up 
the small quadrupeds which have been drowned. It usually flies 
at no great elevation above the water, but when repairing inland 
and returning it frequently rises to a very great height. 
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