218 HAUNTS OF THE SHEARWATER 



ence there is, is in favour of the cow and chicken, both 

 of which have risen in price rather more than the 

 admiral. But this may possibly be accounted for by 

 ' disturbing elements ' in the House of Commons, which 

 in these free-trade days unhappily make themselves 

 felt less in the prices of agricultural produce than in 

 the prices of good public servants. 



An ornithological peculiarity of the Scillies is the 

 sociability of the Great Black-backed Gull. In most 

 places at least in the hardy north these robber 

 barons of the bird- world, respecting neither life nor 

 property, nest alone, few other birds caring to molest 

 their solitary reign. 



Of two of their castles visited at different times by 

 the writer, one was on the peak of a natural Gothic 

 arch of granite, already described, through which the 

 sea broke twenty feet or so from the mainland of the 

 Shetlands. The cliff opposite was deserted for thirty or 

 forty yards on each side by the Lesser Gulls and other 

 sea-fowl, which swarmed elsewhere in every crack and 

 ledge. The other was on an island rock in an inland 

 tarn on a moor in the Hebrides, with no other birds 

 within sight or hearing, excepting a pair or two of rest- 

 less Peewits and a few Pipits, and other small birds 

 superciliously tolerated as beneath notice. 



But as the Moors, who had carried all before them, 

 became weak and effeminate in the soft surroundings 

 of Spain, so the Great Black-backed Gulls have de- 

 generated in the Lotus Isles of Scilly. On the grassy 

 slopes of an outlying island we found eighteen or 



