A DEVONIAN HEADLAND. 145 
mers, a name wherein they preserve, no doubt unknowingly, 
the excellent title of mergus, or diver. 
Chalcombe Head was almost entirely appropriated by sea- 
birds. The cliffs are here lofty, hard, and everywhere well nigh 
perpendicular : they were thus entirely unclimbable, save only at 
one perilous gap near the hamlet, where adventurous smugglers, 
by a terrible path which we may well look down with awe, used 
to carry up the brandy-kegs, or, as they were called, tubs — with 
which, in their open lug-sailboats, with picturesque bark-browned 
sails, they ran across the Channel, often in dark and boisterous 
weather, from the French coast at Cherbourg. 
The birds could here breed unmolested. About half-way 
down the cliffs, kindly Nature seemed to have especially provided 
for them a fit and secure nesting-place. For there, one of the 
layers of flints, which run regularly along the upper chalk, had 
fallen out, and thus left a long and deep horizontal ledge, which 
was full of birds’ nests, from one end to the other. When the 
young birds were hatched, an observer who could look without 
dizziness over the edge, straight down the high cliffs, might see 
the necks of the young protruding beyond the ledge over the 
rocks and sea below. And then, sometimes, adventurous boys 
would tie a tin kettle to one end of a long rope, and rattling the 
kettle against the cliff all along the ledge, would thus, at the 
utmost risk of breaking their necks, send the nestlings flying off 
into space, and raise such an amazing clamour among the 
alarmed parents as would add much to the delightful excitement 
of the perilous pleasure. High over head the angry gulls would 
fly, each one of the frightened flock striving, as it would seem, 
to make more noise than its companions. Now and then one 
after another of the anxious mothers would make a swoop down, 
right at the head of the disturbing boy, as if she was going to 
try to knock the intruder over the edge of the cliff. And a 
downrush of the wonderful flight of the big white herring-gulls, 
as one lay near their stronghold at the edge of the cliffs, might 
certainly seem alarming. After many attempts with a tin kettle, 
the birds got to regard them much as land-birds do a passing 
railway train : — they became, as it were, kettle-hardened. Then 
ingenious youth would try the letting down of a lighted furze- 
branch, which, though more perilous and difficult to do properly, 
would sometimes prove for awhile more effective. But birds 
soon get used to threats that do them no harm ; thus these 
yearly encounters between the boys and the sea-birds seemed to 
end at last like lovers’ quarrels, and proved little beyond the 
renewing of love. For there were then no rifles, no guns indeed 
of any kind, to strew the cliffs and shores with death. The 
railway was then far off, and, from their sport amidst these birds, 
the boys learnt lessons in bird-life, and went therefrom to other 
lore in natural history, such as no books in their after lives could 
teach them, and no exile from these pleasant regions could ever 
deprive them of. More than one young Selbornian has, amidst 
