32 Spring ^ 



instance, if the winter has been wet and the nesting 

 places are covered with water, explorers will come to 

 see what things look like, and then carry the colony 

 elsewhere ' it may be for years, and it may be for 

 ever.' Again, the female gull favours her human 

 acquaintances up to a certain point. Long ago, when 

 landed proprietors were less ' cultured ' than now, and 

 looked on a parcel of unshootable gulls as less an 

 ornament than a nuisance, it was customary to farm 

 the pond to those who sold the young and eggs, which 

 are very pretty eating. Now, Minnehaha a render- 

 ing more free than accurate of the scientific Larus 

 .Ridibundus seems up to a certain point to see the 

 justice of this : not being Irish, she does not expect 

 to live rent free, and she will therefore go so far as to 

 lay three sets of eggs a season one for the landlord, 

 one for the hungry birds-nester, and a third which 

 she thought to hatch. But, as usual, the middleman 

 turned out a rack-renter, and if she had gone on laying 

 all the summer it would have been the same ; so 

 Minnehaha took the pet, and never came back again. 

 Another scare was more effectual still. One spring I 

 was fishing in a little mere among the Cheviots, which 

 twenty or thirty years ago was always at that season 

 crowded with gulls. Not one comes now, though many 

 devices have been tried to bring them : eggs having 

 even been hatched there in the hope that, being 

 natives, the young migrants would return. Here it 

 was not a case of over-flooding. The place was fancied 



