82 THE LAND'S END 



related by Darwin in describing the natives of 

 Tierra del Fuego in his Voyage of a Naturalist. An- 

 other very pathetic case is related by Browning, in 

 the Dramatic Idylls^ in which the woodcutter in a 

 Russian village who is able to handle his axe so deftly 

 strikes off the head of a young woman who has just 

 escaped from the wolves that pursued her in the forest. 

 They sprang upon her in her sleigh and dragged her 

 child from her arms ; the pious woodcutter thought 

 she should have allowed herself to be torn to pieces 

 before releasing the child. Then, after striking 

 her head off he goes to his cottage, puts down the 

 axe, and plays with his children on the floor and is 

 greatly surprised that any fuss should be made by 

 his fellow-villagers at what he had done. 



The gulls have a particularly uncomfortable time 

 when, as occasionally happens during the pilchard 

 fishing, a number of gannets appear to claim their 

 share in the spoil. No sooner has the circle of the 

 seine been completed, forming a pool teeming with 

 fish in the sea as it were, than the gulls are there in a 

 dense crowd. Then if the gannets appear hovering 

 over them and hurling themselves down like rocks 

 into the seine the gulls scatter in consternation and 

 have to wait their turn. The wonder is that the 

 gannets diving with such violence, bird following bird 

 so closely, all in so small an area, do not collide and 

 kill each other. Somehow as by a miracle they escape 

 accidents, and when they have gorged until they can 

 gorge no more they retire to digest their meal at sea, 

 and immediately the gulls return to feast with a tre- 



