NATURE STUDY. 
170 
afar till some small poacher has caught a good fish dinner, 
then rushes up with great bluster and display of force, and 
appropriates to himself the poor little bird’s prizes. Fierce 
and powerful, he is still a great coward, the shyest of the 
gulls when man appears. One often sees them resting on 
the sand beach, a quarter of a mile away, looking like big 
black and white geese, but as soon as a human head appears 
over the dunes, away go the gulls for parts remote. It is 
said that they even desert their eggs and young when man 
approaches, and show very little anxiety as to their fate. 
They are a more northern species than the herring gull, 
breeding on both sides of the Atlantic, in America north of 
Nova Scotia. In winter he is common along our coasts,- 
and goes as far south as Virginia. I have seen occasional 
birds in August and September. 
Snyder. 
BY A PINFEATHER ORNITHOEOGIST. 
Any full-fledged ornithologist would tell you that you 
could not see birds satisfactorily from a carriage ; that if 
you would make a long and varied list you must trudge 
on foot over the promising territory, and listen with in¬ 
tentness at every step ; that if your vehicle be a sleigh and 
you expect to hear the guiding chirp of the winter call 
note with the jingle of the bells drowning all finer sounds, 
you will be doomed to disappointment; and that you 
would do better to stay at home and read Nature Study, 
for so you would get more profit to your mind. 
This is true of every other bird lover in the world save 
this one ; for no one else has Snyder, and I have. Now 
Snyder is a horse of some ten summers and an enormous 
amount of bird (as well as horse) sense. So trained has 
