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struggled for some time with its captive, but was compelled in the end to let it go, diving its head 
after it several times, but to no purpose. In a state of domestication it will feed freely on cooked 
vegetables, or on any thing that may be offered to it, although it always gives the preference to fresh 
meat of any kind. 
In Napier, where the cultivated grounds were at one time infested with the introduced snail 
{Ilelix hoftensis^, this Gull was found to be quite invaluable. In Mr. Tiffen’s beautiful garden a pair 
of them lived for a considerable time, subsisting entirely on the snail, and performing good service 
among the ferneries. In another place, however, the gardener complained that he was unable to keep 
them on account of their inquisitive habits, all the labels being torn out of the seed-beds as soon as 
they were put down. 
I do not think it has ever been recorded yet that the Sea-Gull has a natural love for music. I 
have seen a tame one in a settler’s garden run up to the house as soon as the children commenced 
theii morning practice on the piano, enter at the open door and stand in the passage in a position of 
eager attention. I was assured that this was an invariable habit, showing incontestably that the bird 
was not insensible to music. On one occasion, long after dark, attracted by the strains of a lively 
waltz, it posted itself under the bay-window and began to scream as if in eager accompaniment ! 
It appears to be semi-nocturnal in its habits, for I have found it moving about on the sands long 
after dark. And often, when travelling by a coastal steamer, after the sun had gone down in his 
splendour behind the rugged crests of the mainland and the pall of night had settled down upon the 
waters, I have observed one or two of them still hovering in our wake. It certainly is the first of the 
shore-birds to be astir in the morning, and unless the frost-fish * hunter commences his search on the 
beach in the early dawn, he finds that the Sea-Gull has been before him and has mangled and partly 
devoured the object of his quest. 
On the memorable 9th September, 1885, during the total eclipse of the sun, one of the objects 
that especially attracted my notice was a Gull of this species hovering in the sky. With many other 
eager spectators, I had been watching this grand phenoilienon of nature through an astronomical tele- 
scope from a good point of observation on the slope of Mount Victoria. The progress of the eclipse 
was accompanied by an extraordinary exhibition of heavy dark shadows on the undulating hills at the 
back of Wellington, the appearance being wholly unlike anything one had witnessed before. As 
totality approached these shadows became fused or merged into a deep neutral tint, and the whole 
landscape was plunged in a livid, unnatural twilight. At the moment of total obscuration- when, 
although the corona presented a nimbus or luminous halo of lustrous beauty, the surface of the earth 
was overspi'ead with an almost appalling, shadowless gloom — a flight of Sparrows, keeping close to 
the ground, swept past us in silence and disappeared in a hollow, whilst a solitary Sea-Gull, on firm 
pinion, was to be seen mounting high in the air, in the very line of vision ; and when, after eighty 
seconds of indescribable emotion to the spectator, the solar orb, preceded by red flashes of lambent 
flame without the moon’s periphery, burst forth in all his glorious effulgence of dazzling light, and 
nature assumed once more her wonted aspect, the Sea-Gull was still to be seen hovering high in the 
heavens as if in utter bewilderment at this unusual scene. 
At the commencement of winter there are few birds, as a rule, to be seen at sea. I have made 
the voyage at this season from Wellington to Manukau, in fine weather, without seeing a single Petrel 
of any kind— only a solitary Gannet off Taranaki, a few Caspian Terns fishing around the Sugar Loaves, 
and a small flock of Tarapunga as we neared the Manukau heads. But this fine Gull was a constant 
attendant, one particular individual, with a peculiar mark on its breast, following us all the way from 
* The frost-flsh (Lepidojpus caudatus), the most delicately flavoured of all New-Zealand fishes, is an inhabitant of deep water, 
and on frosty nights, owing probably to its air-bladders becoming choked, it is cast up by the surf on the ocean-beach. It often 
attains to a length of four feet, is shaped like a whip-snake, and its smooth skin has the sheen of burnished silver. 
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