222 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



I myself have a very certain admiration for the herring ; 

 the salmon may be the king of fish, and the pink-fleshed 

 loch trout of Scotland make epicurean mouths water at the 

 antipodes ; the white fillets of sole may be more aristocratic, 

 and the creaminess of a seasonable turbet unique, but none 

 of these have anything like the savour of the necessary, 

 harmless bloater ! He is at the bottom of the scale in 

 humility and consideration, yet surely a long way from the 

 last in all the qualities that could endear him to the hungry 

 and frugal. If it was a case of kittiwakes or red-herring, 

 then patriotism, as well as the remembrance of a score of 

 simple meals in quiet hostelries, and the snug parlours of 

 water-side inns, would cast judgment in favour of the latter. 

 But matters have not come to this pass ; the world is quite 

 big enough for fish and feathers, and this in spite of an 

 avaricious commerce or the mercantile greed of some few 

 long shoresmen, who take an undoubtedly heavy toll of the 

 harvest of the sea. 



That the seafowl do a scarcely appreciable amount of 

 harm from a utilitarian point of view is not difficult to 

 demonstrate to an open mind. The chief culprits accused 

 of voracious and misdirected appetites are the common 

 gull, black-headed gull, herring gull, great black-backed 

 gull, cormorant, green cormorant, gannet or solan goose, 

 guillemot, puffin, razor-bill, northern diver. 



Besides these there are some culprits in a lesser degree, 

 or whose interference is so occasional as to be hardly worth 

 considering. There are rarer gulls than the five mentioned 

 that now and then mix with the flights and feed amongst 

 them; the ducks of a dozen species are also omitted, as, 

 though many of them are at sea all day, they are vegetable 

 feeders. The same applies to geese and swans ; and god wits, 

 sandpipers, and plovers, are harmless dabblers in back waters 

 and creeks, where they thin out the small Crustacea and 

 shrimps. 



The main charge against all these birds is, of course, 



