CH. VII. ] HOW TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR. 237 
finding them. The Gulls are said to have apparently 
suffered less than the other three species, a circum- 
stance which (as Gulls do not feed so exclusively 
on fish) would, so far as it goes, tend to support 
this view of the case. The second cause, that of 
poison, though indeed possible, yet seems so ex- 
tremely improbable, that I think it may be dis- 
missed as scarcely worth consideration. The last, 
that of disease, appears to me at once the simplest 
and most probable. I can see no good reason why 
sea-birds should enjoy an immunity from epide- 
mics any more than land-birds—Grouse, for in- 
stance, which have suffered so severely within the 
last few years—and to some such visitation I 
should be inclined to attribute the mortality which 
has thus raged amongst them. If but one species 
had been attacked, I should have had scarcely 
any doubt on the subject, but there is on the 
whole, I think, less difficulty in arriving at this 
conclusion than any other. 
Had only a few birds been picked up on one 
part of the coast, their deaths might have been 
very fairly attributed to weather, but it seems 
scarcely possible that any storm could have at 
once so wide a range, and so extensively de- 
structive an effect. 
