ZOOLOGICAL SOCIE 

 BULLETIN 



PvbJ ished by the Netv York Zoological Socie 



Vol. XVII 



MAY. 1914 



Number 3 



A TRIHrTE TO THE SEA GULL 



Bi/ G. O. Shields. 



VISITORS to Salt Lake City will hereafter 

 have the privilege of beholding the first 

 monument ever erected by grateful peo- 

 ple to any bird. We have monuments all over 

 the civilized world, commemorating the deeds 

 of great men and events of every sort, but 

 never before has man expressed his apprecia- 

 tion of the work of insect-eating birds by such 

 a tribute. 



A photograph of the Gull monument is shown 

 as the frontispiece of this issue of the Bullk- 

 TiN, and herewith appear two of the bronze 

 tablets which decorate two sides of the pedestal. 



The story that the monument stands for is 

 interesting, quite to the verge of romance. In 

 1848, a year after the first pioneers had set- 

 tled in the great Salt Lake Valley, when their 

 first wheat crops were growing and represented 

 well-nigh the sole sustenance of the colony for 

 the coming year, the tradition exists that hordes 

 of grasshoppers descended from the adjacent 

 mountains and began to devour the grain and 

 everything else that was green in the valley. 

 The pests moved in a line that was miles in 

 length, like a great army going into battle, and 

 devoured everv vestige of vegetation, leaving 

 the ground behind them looking like a bed of 

 ashes. The settlers were heartbroken, and 

 panic-stricken, because they saw starvation 

 stalking behind them. 



Down at the lake, a few miles away, so the 

 legend goes, were thousands of snow-white 

 herring gulls, and the visitation of grasshop- 

 pers did not long escape their keen eyes. There 

 was a great commotion among the flock of gulls. 

 and those flying in the air in every direction 



seemed to be calling to their mates to go to 

 the fields and help destroy the insects. 



The birds soon located the invading army, 

 circled over and about it, then swooped down 

 upon it and began to devour it. The insects 

 were powerless to offer resistance, and the 

 birds scooped them up literally by millions. 



As fast as the foragers loaded their crops to 

 their full capacity, they took wing and flew 

 away to the banks of a neighboring creek, 

 to digest their great load of grasshoppers, 

 while others took their places in the work of 

 destruction. And so the slaughter went on 

 through the day. At night the gulls returned 

 to the lake, but at dawn the next morning they 

 were again on the scene of action ; and they 

 continued until the army of grasshoppers was 

 literally annihilated. 



The jiioneer farmers and tlieir wives were 

 filled with gratitude, and many of them fell 

 on their knees and returned thanks for their de- 

 liverance from the starvation that had stared 

 them in the face. From that day to this, the 

 descendants of these early settlers have held 

 the gulls in grateful memory. It has been 

 generally known throughout the state of LTtah 

 that any man or boy who would dare to kill 

 one of these birds would be liable to pay the 

 jienalty with his own life, and so far as is 

 known, in all these years no one ever has killed 

 one of these birds in that state. 



A few years ago the gratitude of the people 

 of Salt Lake City to their deliverers took 

 tangible shape. A young newspaper reporter, 

 named Isaac Russell, and who is now on the 

 New York Times, wrote a Christmas storv for 



