352 THE BIRD WATCHER 
in which the gull Ts to work. We have, here, no 
swoop and rush of wings, from giddy heights, as in 
the falcon tribe ; there is no dilating of the plumage, 
no eloquent expression of the fiercer emotions; no 
fine embodiment of speed, power, rage, combined, is 
presented to us, nor does the victim lie, in an instant, 
prostrate and bleeding beneath the claws of its de- 
stroyer. Such sights make fine pictures. They per- 
sonify, in a grand and striking way, our ideas of the 
inevitable and irresistible—of fate, clothed in terror. 
There is something in them of the old Greek drama, 
nay, of our rea/ conceptions—drawn from nature 
and the Old Testament—of the Deity. But here 
there is nothing of all this—no impetuosity, and not 
enough strength or mastery to give a sense of power, 
at least not of mighty power. Structurally the gull is 
not specially fitted, nor, in general appearance, does he 
look fitted, for the part he is acting, and this, as is 
usual, gives something of a bungling appearance to 
his handiwork. Above all, he lacks fire, and this 
makes one doubly alive to the cruelty, which is not 
so disagreeably felt in witnessing the fierce thunder- 
bolts of a true bird or beast of prey. There it is 
masked, so to speak, under “the power and the 
glory,” but here we see only a sordid and cold-blooded 
murder, unrelieved by any feature of special interest 
even, much less by any apparently ennobling element. 
As a spectacle, it compares very unfavourably with 
that of snakes killing their prey, and equally, or even 
more so, from the intellectual point of view. For 
