CrrAr EE Re 1! 
SPOILER AND SPOILED 
O the one smooth beach that there is here come 
the terns, each year, to breed, and from these, 
as well as from the various gulls that nest upon the 
island, the lesser or Arctic skua~-whom some call 
Richardson’s, as though it belonged to that gentleman 
—1is accustomed to take toll. Sweeping the sea with 
the glasses, one detects, here and there upon its sur- 
face, a dusky but elegantly shaped bird, that some- 
times rises from the water and descends upon it again, 
slowly and gracefully, but is never seen to poise and 
hawk at fish, like the terns themselves, or, more 
rarely, some of the gulls. These are those skuas 
who elect to take their chances at sea, and whenever 
a tern rises after making his plunge, with a fish in his 
bill, they rise also and pursue him. Then may be 
witnessed a long and interesting chase, in the course 
of which the two birds will sometimes mount up to 
a considerable height, rising alternately, one above 
the other, as though each were ascending an aerial 
ladder. There are no gyrations in these ascents. 
They are, or at least they have the appearance of 
being, almost perpendicular, so that they differ alto- 
gether from those of the heron and hawk, once 
familiar in falconry, and of which Scott has given us 
9 
