EGGS STOLEN BY GULLS. 45 



it is very rarely left, and it is only for this one day that the 

 collectors have much chance of getting it. They tell you 

 that when the bird has once hegun sitting, she will never 

 suffer herself to he robbed, but that when all chance of 

 saving the egg is gone, she rolls it off the ledge and flies 

 away. This story is partly true, but there is some doubt 

 whether she acts on the true dog-in-the-manger system of 

 smashing her egg because no one else shall have it : its 

 position is so ticklish, that when the bird is forced to take 

 flight to avoid capture, she may very easily upset her 

 charge and pitch it over the precipice, in the mere flurry 

 attendant on the act of self-preservation. 



Man is not the only robber this poor bird has to fear : 

 the gulls and ravens are ever on the alert to secure her 

 eggs. This is horrid unkind of neighbours, but perhaps 

 not inconsistent with our own practice. The GULLS are 

 for ever scanning the face of the cliff, hoping to catch a 

 glimpse of an unprotected egg. Directly a gull has found 

 one, he charges point blank at its small end, using his 

 beak as a lance : the huge egg, thus pierced, sticks on his 

 beak, and he flies away as though he was carrying a great 

 pear in front of his head ; in this way he sucks out all 

 the goodness while on the wing, and drops the shell when 

 empty. These shells, with a great hole at one end, may 



bers of young guillemots, diving and sporting on the sea, quite unable to fly ; 

 and I observed others on the ledges of the rocks, as I went down among them, 

 in such situations that, had they attempted to fall into the waves beneath, they 

 would have been killed by striking against the projecting points of the inter- 

 vening sharp and rugged rocks : wherefore I concluded that the information of 

 the rock-climbers was to be depended upon ; and I more easily gave credit to it, 

 because I myself have seen an old swan sailing on the water with her young 

 ones upon her back, about a week after they had been hatched." Watertori's 

 Essays, 1st Series, 159. E. N. 



