THE GULL. 



211 



The gull, arid all its varieties, is very well 

 known in every part of the kingdom. It is 

 seen with a slow-sailing flight, hovering over 

 rivers to prey upon the smaller kinds of fish ; 



ways performed by hovering, and without presenting ap- 

 parent vibrations. They rise with facility, and can fly 

 against the strongest winds, which never slacken their 

 movements. The tempest not only does not affright 

 them, but they are almost necessitated to seek those seas 

 where the agitation of the waves brings to the surface 

 those marine animals which constitute their food. In 

 consequence of this, they are frequently seen in all wea- 

 thers, in the vortices which are formed by the track ot 

 vessels. The following cut represents the common 

 Stormy Petrel. 



The Little Stormy Petrel breeds in the Orkneys. 

 Mr Scarth states that, in passing over a tract of peat- 

 moss, near the shore, in a small uninhabited island in 

 Orkney, one evening in the month of August, he 

 was surprised to hear a low, purring noise, somewhat 

 resembling the sound of a spinning-wheel in motion ; 

 and, on inquiry, he was informed by one of the boatmen 

 who accompanied him, that it was the noise commonly 

 emited by the Alimonty (the Orkney name for the 

 stormy petrel, that frequented the island when hatch- 

 ing. On examining a small hole in the ground, he 

 found the bird and its nest, which was very simple, 

 being little more than a few fragments of shells laid on 

 the bare turf. It contained two round, pure-white eggs, 

 which were very large in comparison with the size of 

 the bird. [One egg is the more usual production of the 

 Petrel.] When he seized the bird, she squirted out of 

 her mouth an oily substance of a very rancid smell. He 

 took her home, and having put her into a cage, he 

 offered her various kinds of worms to eat ; but, as far 

 as he could observe, she ate nothing till after the expira- 

 tion of four days, when he observed that she occasionally 

 drew the feathers of her breast singly across, or rather 

 through her bill, and appeared to suck an oily substance 

 from them. This induced him to smear her breast with 

 common train oil ; and, observing that she greedily 

 sucked the feathers, he repeated the smearing two or 

 three times in each day for about a week. He then 

 placed a saucer containing oil in the cage, and observed 

 that she regularly extracted the oil by dipping her breast 

 in the vessel, and then sucked the feathers as before. 

 In this way he kept her for three months. After feed- 

 ing, she sat quietly at the bottom of the cage, sometimes 

 making the same purring noise which first attracted his 

 notice and sometimes whistling very shrilly. " There 

 are," says Wilson, " few persons who have crossed the 

 Atlantic that have not observed these solitary wanderers 

 of the deep, skimming along the surface of the wild and 

 wasteful ocean ; flitting past the vessel like swallows, 

 or following in her wake, gleaning their scanty pittance 

 of food from the rough and whirling surges. Habited 

 in mourning, and making their appearance generally in 

 greater numbers previous to or during a storm, they 

 have long been fearfully regarded by tho ignorant and 

 superstitious, not only as the foreboding messengers of 

 tempests and dangers to the hapless mariner, but as 

 wicked agents, connected some how or other in creating 

 them. Nobody/ say they, cau tell any thing of 



it is seen following the ploughman in fallow 

 fields to pick up insects; and when living 

 animal food does not offer, it has even been 

 known to eat carrion, and whatever else of 



where they come from, or how they breed, though (as 

 sailors sometimes say) it is supposed that they hatch 

 their eggs under their wings as they sit on the water.' 

 This mysterious uncertainty of their origin, and the 

 circumstances above recited, have doubtless given rise 

 to the opinion, so prevalent among this class of men, 

 that they are in some way or other connected with 

 the prince of the power of the air. In every country 

 where they are known, their names have borne some 

 affinity to this belief. They have been called witches, 

 stormy petrels, the Devil's birds and Mother Gary's 

 chickens, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of 

 that name ; and their unexpected and numerous ap- 

 pearance has frequently thrown a momentary damp over 

 the mind of the hardiest seamen. It is the business d 

 the naturalist, and the glory of philosophy, to examine 

 into the reality of these things ; to dissipate the clouds 

 of error and superstition wherever they darken and be- 

 wilder the human understanding, and to illustrate na- 

 ture with the radiance of truth." When we inquire, 

 accordingly, into the unvarnished history of this ominous 

 bird, we find that it is by no means peculiar in presag- 

 ing storms, for many others of very different families 

 are evidently endowed with an equally nice perception 

 of a change in the atmosphere. Hence it is that, before 

 rain swallows are seen more eagerly hawking for flies, 

 and ducks carefully trimming their feathers, and tossing 

 up water over their backs, to try whether it will run off 

 again without wetting them. But it would be as absurd 

 to accuse the swallows and ducks on that account of 

 being the cause of rain, as to impute a tempest to the 

 spiteful malice of the poor petrels. Seamen ought rather 

 to be thankful to them for the warning which their deli- 

 cate feelings of aerial change enable them to give of an 

 approaching hurricane. "As well," says Wilson, 

 " might they curse the midnight light-house that, star- 

 like, guides them on their watery way ; or the buoy 

 that warns them of the sunken rocks below, as this harm- 

 less wanderer, whose manner informs them of the ap- 

 proach of the storm, and thereby enables them to pre- 

 pare for it." The petrels are nocturnal birds. When, 

 therefore, they are seen flying about and feeding by day, 

 the fact appears to indicate that they have been driven 

 from their usual quarters by a storm ; and hence, per- 

 haps, arose the association of the bird with the tempest. 

 Though the petrels venture to wing their way over the 

 wide ocean, as fearlessly as our swallows do over a mill- 

 pond, they are not, therefore, the less sensible to danger; 

 and, as if feelingly aware of their own weakness, they 

 make all haste to the nearest shelter. When they can- 

 not then find an island or a rock to shield them from the 

 blast, they fly towards the first ship they can descry, 

 crowd into her wake, and even close under the stern, 

 heedless, it would appear, of the rushing surge, so that 

 they can keep the vessel between them and the unbroken 

 sweep of the wind. It is not to be wondered at, in such 

 cases, that their low wailing note of Meet, weet, should 

 add something supernatural to the roar of waves and 

 whistling of the wind, and infuse an ominous dread into 

 minds prone to superstition. The popular opinion 

 among sailors, that the petrels carry their eggs under 

 their wings in order to hatch them, is no less unfounded 

 than the fancy of their causing storms: it is, indeed, 

 physically impossible. On the contrary, the petrels have 

 been ascertained to breed on rocky shores, in numerous 

 communities, like the bank-swallow, making their nests 

 in the holes and cavities of the rocks above the sea, re- 

 turning to feed their young only during the night, with 

 the superabundant oily food from their stomachs. Tha 



