226 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



beach and the cliffs are strewed with young ones. I fell in 

 with a party one day myself who had been shooting. They 

 had caught four young guillemots alive, and the poor little 

 things were yelping themselves to death all the way they 

 went. They had got one kittiwake with a broken wing, and 

 were carrying it with the other wing. I asked them what 

 they were going to do with them, and they said they were 

 going to take them home with them, and turn them into the 

 garden. If that is not cruelty to sea-birds, I do not know 

 what is. I think it is a very great shame to shoot gulls and 

 kitti wakes at all, for they are the best friends the farmers 

 have, for they never touch a grain of corn at any time of the 

 season. I think I need not confine myself to the farmers 

 only, but I might say the country at large, for all the trades 

 are upholden by the farmers. Forty years ago we never had 

 any grubbed land in this neighbourhood, when we had thou- 

 sands more gulls and kittiwakes than we have now. They 

 used to follow the plough by hundreds ; the ploughboy could 

 turn round with a stick and hit them ; now he may plough 

 for days, and never see one near at hand, and we have very 

 little land in the neighbourhood but what is infested with 

 grubs. There was a gentleman farmer in Buckton some 

 years ago, who shot a gull, and he said he was fit to cry when 

 he saw what a friend he had shot, for when it fell it threw up 

 a quantity of nothing but grubs and worms, and he vowed 

 on that day that he would never shoot another as long as he 

 lived. Some people say that they are very destructive amongst 

 fish, but I think what they get is a useless kind of fish, for 

 what the climber has brought up to me are almost as much 

 in the shape of a worm as a fish. I must admit that they 

 will want a great quantity of food of some kind, as many of 

 them never feed on the land ; but forty or fifty years ago, 

 when we had thousands more sea-birds than we have now, 

 I have taken tons of fish from Bridlington to Hull at sixpence 

 per stone." 



Several species build on the inland moors and wastes, and 



