The California Gull 



If you would cultivate gull society, fee the galley for a loaf of bread 

 and smuggle it up surreptitiously to the hurricane deck, well aft. Now 

 for some fun! The hungry horde weaves to and fro, forward and back, 

 up and down and around, mewing expectantly like a litter of kittens at 

 milking time. Hold up a piece of bread and the pace becomes furious. 

 "Please! please! please!" they cry, until their mandibles fairly quiver with 

 eagerness. But none snatches it from your hand ; they are too well dis- 

 ciplined in the treacherous ways of men for that. When at last the bit 

 is flung — instant silence. Every gray bolt is launched at the falling bread 

 and the water where it must pause. Crash ! And the clamor bursts out 

 afresh, for the luckless many must voice their disappointment while the 

 lucky one gulps down the prize and hurries back for more. 



Gulls do not ordinarily dive, for they are light as corks. They 

 snatch their food rather from the surface of the water. If there is 

 plenty, as when the cook dumps the 

 accumulated leavings from the cap- 

 tain's table, the gulls settle grace- 

 fully upon the water and throw the 

 morsels down by rapidly succeeding 

 jets of the head. 



The more experienced birds learn 

 to catch bread on the wing, and the 

 disclosure of such ability guarantees 

 its owner a full meal. It is no small 

 trick to catch a bit of flying bread in 

 the teeth of the wind, for it is some- 

 times a nice fraction of a second be- 

 tween the bestowing hand and the 

 bird's beak. 



Long before the bread gives out, 

 you have been seized afresh with 

 wonder at the mystery of that gliding 

 flight. Graceful, effortless, untiring, 

 but above all mysterious, is that pow- 

 er of propulsion by which the bird 



moves forward into the teeth of the gale, — indeed, is advanced all the 

 more certainly and freely when the wind is strong. From the deck of a 

 steamer making fifteen miles an hour against a fifteen knot breeze, I 

 once stretched my hand toward a soaring gull. He lay suspended in 

 midair without the flutter of a feather, while the air rushed past him at 

 the rate of thirty miles an hour; and he maintained the same relative 

 position to my hand, at five or six feet, for about a minute. When he tired 



Taken in Seattle 



Photo by the Author 



SUCCESS 



I4.OI 



