STRANGE WAYS OF GULLS. 211 



we surprised him on the lowest wire of the 

 fence, he was terribly disconcerted, not to say 

 thrown into a panic. He usually stood a mo- 

 ment, holding his long tail up in the air, flirted 

 his wings, turned his body this way and that in 

 great excitement, then hopped to the nearest 

 bowlder, slipped down behind it, and ran off 

 through the sage bushes like a mouse. More 

 than this we were never able to see, and where 

 he lived and how his spouse looked we do not 

 know to this day. 



Most interesting of the birds that we saw on 

 our daily way to the pasture were the gulls ; 

 great, beautiful, snowy creatures, who looked 

 strangely out of place so far away from the sea- 

 shore. Stranger, too, than their change of resi- 

 dence was their change of manners from the 

 wild, unapproachable sea-birds, soaring and div- 

 ing, and apparently spending their lives on wings 

 such as the poet sings, 



" When I had wings, my brother, 



Such wings were mine as thine ; " 



and of whose lives he further says, 



" What place man may, we claim it, 

 But thine, whose thought may name it ? 

 Free birds live higher than freemen, 

 And gladlier ye than we." 



From this high place in our thoughts, from this 

 realm of poetry and mystery, to come down al- 



