f a swallow, but it should
be evident to the most homely intelligence that such debris merely
indicates careless individuals that, in passing over the water, got
their plumage waterlogged and were then drowned. It seems strange that
Gilbert White, so accurate an observer of birds, should actually have
toyed with this curious belief, though he leant rather to the more
reasonable version of occasional hybernation in caves or other
sheltered hiding-places. The rustic mind, however, preferred, and in
some unsophisticated districts still prefers, the ancient belief in
diving swallows, and no weight of evidence, however carefully presented,
would shake it in its creed. Fortunately this eccentric view of the
swallow's habits brings no harm to the bird itself, and may thus be
tolerated as an innocuous indulgence on the part of those who prefer
this fiction to the even stranger truth.

AUGUST

THE SEAGULL

THE SEAGULL

So glorious is the flight of the seagull that it tempts us to fling
aside the dry-as-dust theories of mechanism of flexed wings, coefficient
of air resistance, and all the abracadabra of the mathematical
biologist, and just to give thanks for a sight so inspiring as that of
gulls ringing high in the eye of the wind over hissing combers that
break on sloping beaches or around jagged rocks. These birds are one
with the sea, knowing no fear of that protean monster which, since
earth's beginning, has always, with its unfathomable mystery, its
insatiable cruelty, its tremendous strength, been a source of terror to
the land animals that dwell in sight of it. Yet the gulls sit on the
curling rollers as much at their ease as swimmers in a pond, and give an
impression of unconscious courage very remarkable in creatures that seem
so frail. Hunger may drive them inland, or instincts equally
irresistible at the breeding season, but never the worst gale that
lashes the sea to fury, for they dread it in its hour of rage as little
as on still summer nights when, in their hundreds, they fly off the land
to roost on the water outside the headlands.

It is curious that there should be no mention of them in the sacred
writings. We read of quails coming in from the sea, likewise of "four
great beasts," but of seafowl never a word, though one sees them in
abundance on the coast near Jaffa, and the Hebrew writers might have
been expected to weave them into the rich fabrics of their poetic
imagery as they did the pe