THE WAY OF THE GULL 203 



The birds are in touch with every eddy and current, and 

 make the winds their ministers. 



All round the world we meet them or they meet us, 

 displaying the same winged freedom and much the same 

 surprising tameness. You may go as close as you dare to 

 the colony of Idttiwakes nesting on the North end of 

 Lundy, and they seem as solid and at least as tame as 

 domestic hens. Then one glides serenely from the slope 

 of the cliff towards the sea, and it appears as a phantom, 

 a nurseling of sea and sky, less solid than Shelley s cloud ; 

 they &quot; are all spirits &quot; like the actors in The Tempest. 



The gulls of the Pacific attract your wonder and con 

 tinual gaze even more securely than those of the Atlantic 

 or Mediterranean. The lesser albatross, which is said to 

 roost in the upper air on the sole support of its extended 

 plumage, will accompany your ship mile after long mile, 

 and never perceptibly beat its narrow wings. Yet it 

 skims the sea as closely as Mother Carey s chickens. You 

 must infer that it uses all the while the current of air 

 behind the ship, the upper draught off the swell and the 

 sides of the vessel, as well as the wind directly. Our 

 students of the air, working on behalf of our airmen, are 

 wont (as I once saw at Gibraltar) to test the air move 

 ments by the agency of little balloons or floating objects. 

 They could perhaps extract as perfect evidence from such 

 a careful watch of the gulls as the Wright brothers 

 devoted to the buzzards spiraling on still wings over 

 American towns. It is difficult to believe (as Mr. Orville 

 Wright once assured me) that the birds manufacture their 

 own rising currents for their own ensuing purpose ; but 

 assuredly their movements express the very shape and 

 energy of existing currents formed by this wind and that. 



This unlikely contrast between wild spirit and tame 

 greed is common to a great many species of gull. In 



