28 
food for their young. Owing to the severe drought in the summer 
of 1869, hundreds of young birds died literally of starvation, the 
old ones being unable, as were also the rooks at the same time, to 
procure worms and slugs for their sustenance ; but, literally speak- 
ing, the dead fed the living, since the maggots from the bodies of 
the dead nestlings formed a scanty provision for those hatched later 
in the year. So great, however, were tlie privations of the parent 
birds, that hunger proved too much for even parental affection, 
and many wretched nestlings were left to perish on the island, 
through the old ones taking their departure for the coast several 
weeks before their accustomed time. Owing to the numbers which 
thus met with an untimely end, a jjartial jubilee was enacted in. 
the two following seasons, and thus, in spite of very many being 
shot on the coast during the severe winter of 1870-71, the colony 
this last summer appeared as numerous as CAmr. 
In ordinary seasons, by the end of J uly, the young have acquired 
their full powers of flight, and towards the middle of August 
prepare to quit their breeding place, and with their parents betake 
themselves to the sea coast ; and from that time until the following 
spring, not a single gull can be seen in the vicinity of the gullery, 
their incessant cries, which cease neither day nor night, giving 
place to a stillness and a sense of dreary desolation Avhich must be 
felt to be fully realized. 
The eggs of these gulls, which are generally considered as a great 
delicacy Avhen eaten cold, like lapwing’s eggs, are now sold on the 
spot at from 9d. to Is. a score, but in 1825, according to Messrs. 
Sheppard and Whitear, they fetched only 4d., and the person who 
had then the right of collecting them paid £15 a year for the 
privilege. The package and transmission of such large numbers to 
the different markets in Norfolk and other parts of England is, of 
course, a business of itself, requiring no little care and skill 
on the part of the keeper. The close resemblance of many of these 
eggs to those of the lapwing or peewit, causes them to be not 
unfrequently sold in the market as plover’s eggs, more particularly 
since the latter have become more and more scarce, and the very 
term “ Peewit ” gull, applied to this species, aids the decep- 
tion, and renders the general public more liable to be guUed. 
In looking over a large series, one is struck Avith the extraordinary 
variation in the coloring matter from the normal tints of green and 
