CHAPTER’ XXXVI 
COMPARING NOTES 
APHO would have thought that this same gull— 
the herring-gull—which kills and devours the 
young kittiwakes and puffins, besides living, habitu- 
ally, on fish, crustaceans, molluscs, and any garbage 
it can find, is also a fruit-eater? It is, though, since 
the black berries of the stunted heather, here, are 
certainly its fruit, and these it eats, not as an occa- 
sional variation of diet merely, but systematically 
and with avidity. Indeed, these berries, now that 
they are ripe, seem to me to be the bird’s favourite 
food. I will now give the evidence on which this 
statement is founded, and which I think will be 
admitted to be conclusive. During the last week of 
my stay here, I began to notice, more and more, as 
I walked over the ness, droppings of some bird, 
which were of a dark blue, or purple, colour—in fact, 
a very rich and beautiful dye. These droppings were 
full of the small seeds of some plant, and upon com- 
paring these with the seeds of the heather-berries, 
I found them to be the same. They were too large 
and too numerous to be due to any birds except 
either gulls or skuas, and as I constantly found them 
over the domains of the Arctic skua, I thought at 
first, “Ye are their parents and original.” One 
morning, however, whilst sitting on the rocks, watch- 
365 
