38 THE RING OF NATURE 



the whole face with the hood that proclaims the 

 black-headed gull. 



The aerial evolutions of these Embankment 

 gulls become daily more ambitious. Leaving the 

 water and the outstretched hands that more rarely 

 than of yore offer them food, they spread their 

 motionless wings and, now leaning upon the wind, 

 now sailing before it, ascend their wonderful spiral 

 staircase till they are no more than dots in the 

 far sky. From such a height they can see, when 

 the weather is clear, the stretches of Thames 

 estuary and the low island in the marshes where 

 they were hatched last summer, and will breed in 

 the summer to come. Daily, some of them head 

 off to the east, and come down no more to the 

 charity of the Embankment. No doubt, they 

 establish here their parties of two, and make shy 

 elopement from the crowd here to the daily growing 

 crowd in the breeding rookeries. 



There is a shrill squabbling at the top of a shop 

 fafade, and two sparrows locked in strife fall to 

 the pavement almost under my feet. If St. Valen- 

 tine will not be denied here, how he must be 

 revelling in more sylvan scenes. 



When Christianity began to gain the upper hand 

 in Rome it found that the Feast of Lupercal, falling 

 on the day that we now call the fourteenth of 

 February, was one of the best observed of solar 

 holidays. It is half-way between solar Christmas 

 and solar Easter, the winter solstice and the vernal 

 equinox. Every one upon a journey is fond of 



