358 FACTS AX J) INFERENCES, GRAVE AND GAY. 



GULLS VERSUS GOATS. 



As we were rowing ashore from the cutter, we observed 

 a singular kind of encounter on a small island in Loch 

 Laxford, between a troop of goats and a flock of sea-gulls. 

 The goats were all as black as pitch, and the old ones 

 wire accompanied by some young retainers, which to us 

 looked not much bigger than jackdaws, though as nimble 

 as monkeys. Our notice was first attracted by seeing 

 some of them descend from their rocky ledges, and gambol 

 over a piece of green moist meadow ground. They had 

 not done so, however, for more than a few seconds, before 

 they were attacked most fiercely by a flock of gulls, which 

 dived directly down upon them, and each time they did 

 so the goats made a great spring, as if they found the 

 horny beaks too much for either their fore or hind quarters. 

 They were in a regular quandary, or what the Germans 

 call a ffunke, and it was curious to observe how the gulls 

 achieved their object, by always keeping the goats between 

 themselves and the rocks, and thus at last driving them 

 upwards from the meadow, where, we doubt not, lay their 

 "callow young" — small, soft powder-puffs in woolly gar- 

 ments, which the horny hoof of kidling might have sorely 

 incommoded, but for this brave parental interference. So 

 the goats were gulled, and the gulls not kidnapped. — 

 The Voyage. 



