VORACIOUS EATERS. 
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they are as wise in tlieir generation as their necessities 
require, and what more are we ? 
The Gulls have been accused of a desire to thrust 
their spoons, that is, their bills, into everybody's mess. 
They are greedy birds, say some, delighting in the flesh 
and blubber of dead whales, and such like oily food. 
We know an old gentleman who used to go to Billings- 
gate for a fish dinner every year, and this annual pilgrimage 
to the piscatorial shrine Avas Lis great religious duty ; the 
day w^as his Easter-day and all the great festivals rolled 
into one. What he ate on those occasions — what slippery 
eels went down his throat, and streams of butter with his 
delicious turbot or salmon, who shall tell ! And he was 
but one of a large class. If we had gone into that hand- 
somely-furnished dining saloon, we should have seen ' fifty 
feeding like one.' And were they Gulls? Not they; 
only gluttons, and they love — how they do love! — the 
green fat of the turtle. It seems to be in the nature of 
things that all lovers of fish should be gourmands, and vice 
versa. So the Gulls, and all their relatives who feed on 
the inhabitants of the deep, are voracious eaters, when they 
get a chance of being so. Th? Dutch fabulist, Jacob Cats, 
we may remember, takes occasion to have a fling at the 
birds we are defending. One of his ^ Moral Emblems ' is 
called the Biter Bitten, and is illustrated with a cut repre- 
senting a poor Sea Mew, which had thrust his bill between 
the open valves of an oyster, in search of a delicious morsel, 
caught by the sudden closing of the shell, and struggling 
in vain for release. So might our aldermen struggle for 
release from the pangs of dyspepsia after a fish dinner. 
Gulls are very useful birds in a garden ; they devour 
slugs, snails, worms, and all destructive creatures of the 
kind : sometimes, it seems, they fly at larger game. Here 
is an instance, clipped from a local paper : — * The Common 
Sea Gull is very voracious. Two of these birds, which run 
in the grounds of a gentleman at Canterbury, devoured in 
one day fourteen mice and two rats, and one of them swal- 
lowed a very large rat, whole. The bird made several 
efforts to gorge the animal, and at length succeeded, to the 
astonishment of the bystanders; the tail was visible for 
several minutes.' 
