THE GULL. 379 



indeed, to have little or no sense of danger ; if three or four 

 are in company, and one is shot, the others will usually, 

 instead of hurrying away, come fluttering down to the dead 

 body, uttering their soft, mournful, or, as in this case it might 

 be termed, reproachful cry. Their whole appearance is, in 

 truth, so beautiful and attractive, that we can readily enter 

 into the feeling with which one of these birds was regarded by 

 a forlorn, starving boat's crew, whose vessel, striking on an ice- 

 island, on her passage from Halifax, in North America, to 

 England, foundered and left her miserable inmates on the wide 

 ocean, hourly expecting to be swallowed up by the heavy seas 

 which were constantly breaking over the crowded boats. It 

 was on the evening of the sixth day after quitting the wreck,* 

 just before night set in, that a beautiful white bird, " web- 

 footed, and not unlike a Dove in size and plumage, hovered 

 over the mast-head of the cutter ; and, notwithstanding the 

 pitching of the boat, frequently attempted to perch on it, and 

 continued fluttering there till dark. Trifling as this circum- 

 stance may appear," continues the writer of the narrative, " it 

 was considered by us all as a propitious omen. The impressive 

 manner in which it left us, and returned to gladden us with 

 its presence, awakened in us a superstition, to which sailors 

 are at all times said to be prone. We indulged ourselves, on 

 this occasion, with the most consolatory assurances that the 

 same hand which had provided this solace to our distresses 

 would extricate us from the dangers that surrounded us." 



We come next to the numerous class of Gulls — a class which 

 the sailor is sure to find wherever he goes, whether under the 

 burning sun of the tropical regions, or the frozen icebergs of 

 the Arctic Circle, and always bearing the same restless, noisy 

 character. They have been named, and justly so, the 

 scavengers of the sea, for nothing comes amiss to their voracious 

 appetite. Loathsome as may be the putrefying carrion left on 

 the beach, to the Gull it is just as acceptable as a meal on the 

 finest and freshest fish. On either they will gorge almost to 

 suffocation; and in that state may be taken up torpid and 

 insensible. Some years ago, in riding with a friend on the 

 * Narrative of the loss of the Lady Hobart packet. 



