The California Gull 



is partly due to destruction by rivals. It is easy to filch one egg out of a 

 nest while the owner's back is turned; and from the fierce squabbling 

 which goes on every time there is a re-settlement of the winged hosts, I am 

 led to fear that every exposed egg has to be defended by its rightful owner 

 if it is to survive. 



As I reviewed the matter later (seated in a pine grove at Mammoth — 

 the first moment of notarial leisure allowed in that strenuous season) a 



Taken in Mono County 



ALARM AT NEGIT 



Photo by the Author 



gentle melancholy took possession of me — a regret that all this intensity 

 of living could not have been better seized upon — this furious kaleidoscope 

 of life caught red-handed and transmitted dripping to the page. Perhaps 

 the camera will do that — or what is the camera? A mere mechanism whose 

 record also requires to be interpreted, to be sympathetically considered, 

 in other words, to be lived. And there was life at an intense node — a 

 thousand irate fathers beating the air with futile wing, and venting their 

 rage in incomprehensible cackles and kawks, while a thousand anxious 

 mothers hovered or settled by turns, their hearts wrung by the impor- 

 tunities of a thousand chicks in very moment of entering this bubbling 



1410 



