SYMMETRY AND BEA UTY OF SEA GULLS. 325 



Gull, belonging to a very numerous family, which includes 

 also the squas, terns, petrels, shearwaters, albatrosses, nod- 

 dies, skimmers, and others, all preying chiefly on fishes and 

 mollusca, together with animal garbage of every kind. 

 From the latter circumstance Buffon calls the gulls "the 

 vultures of the ocean ." Several of this family are the most 

 oceanic of all birds, being seen hundreds of miles out at sea, 

 apparently unwearied and restless. The gulls have very 

 powerful wings, flying with ease against the roughest 

 storms. In fine weather they fly high in the air, descend- 

 ing with great rapidity to seize the fishes on the surface 

 of the water, or diving slightly for herrings and small fish 

 within reach. Their plumage being close and thick, they 

 are good swimmers. They have a close resemblance to the 

 terns, or " sea-swallows/' as they are sometimes called, but 

 the bill is stronger, and the upper mandible much more 

 curved towards the end. The symmetry and strength of 

 gulls are remarkable, showing how Nature has adapted 

 them in. every particular for all the purposes of their preda- 

 tory instincts. 



" Let the reader," remarks Mr. Frank Buckland, " examine 

 the pectoral or breast muscles of the next gull he kills: he 

 will find them one solid mass of firm, hard muscle, admirably 

 adapted to sustain and work the wings. What models of 

 beauty and lightness are those wings! The bones are com- 

 posed of the hardest possible kind of bone material, arranged 

 in a tubular form, combining the greatest possible strength 

 with the greatest possible lightness. If we make a section 

 of the wing-bone of a gull, or, better still, of that of an alba- 

 tross, we shall find that it is a hollow cylinder, like a wheat- 

 straw; but, in order to give it still further strength, we see 

 many little pillars of bone about the thickness of a needle 

 extending across from side to side; these buttress-like 

 pillars are in themselves very strong, and do not break 

 easily under the finger. Again, at the top of the bone we 



