WATER FOWL. 383 



birds to seize their prey, and sometimes to elude 

 their pursuers, their society among each other, 

 and their tenderness and care of their young, pro- 

 duce gentler sensations. It is ridiculous also now 

 and then to see their various ways of imposing 

 upon each other. It is common enough, for in- 

 stance, with the arctic gull, to pursue the lesser 

 gulls so long, that they drop their excrements 

 through fear, which the hungry hunter quickly 

 gobbles up before it ever reaches the water. In 

 breeding too they have frequent contests: one 

 bird, who has no nest of her own, attempts to dis- 

 possess another, an d put herself in the place. This 

 often happens among all the gull kind ; and I 

 have seen the poor bird, thus displaced by her 

 more powerful invader, sit near the nest in pen- 

 sive discontent, while the other seemed quite com- 

 fortable in her new habitation. Yet this place of 

 pre-eminence is not easily obtained ; for the in- 

 stant the invader goes to snatch a momentary 

 sustenance, the other enters upon her own, and 

 always ventures another battle before she relin- 

 quishes the justness of her claim. The contem- 

 plation of a cliff thus covered with hatching birds, 

 affords a very agreeable entertainment; and as 

 they sit upon the ledges of the rocks, one above 

 another, with their white breasts forward, the 

 whole group has not unaptly been compared to 

 an apothecary's shop. 



These birds, like all others of the rapacious 

 kind, lay but few eggs ; and hence, in many places, 

 their number is daily seen to diminish. The les- 

 sening of so many rapacious birds may, at first 



