pre-Adamite or Saturnian vernacular in which we are all _trying_ to speak has no verbal sign. Poets, indeed, contrive to catch it, one knows not how, in the meshes of ordinary language, and only therefore are poets; but to frame in it any question or answer suited to the wants of the understanding is a feat beyond man's power. It is true that Mr. Herbert Spencer, having, by diligent, heroic self-desiccation, got his mind into the purely adult, dried-beef condition, well freed from all boy-juices of imagination, has discovered that all Fact in this universe, which cannot be verbally formulated and made a scientific dogma, is without significance to man's spirit, however it may be negatively implied as a vacant somewhat by his logic. For which discovery the incomparable man will please accept my profoundest ingratitude. After "positive philosophy," the croak of ravens, the hoot of owls, anything that has the touch, the charm, and infinite suggestion of Nature and life, will be more than welcome; and in good time we have reached the desired island. Not to find eiders, though, but only Saddle-Back Gulls, a crowd of which arose on our approach, and hovered about at safe, yet tantalizing distance, keeping up their monotonous, piping scream. The saddle-back, a large, powerful white bird, with a patch of black crossing it like a saddle, is the great enemy of the eider, pillaging its nest and devouring its young at every opportunity, and had probably driven the ducks from this place. It is a pirate of pirates, a Semmes in the air, cowardly toward equals, relentless toward the weak and unweaponed; and the chief care of the mother duck is to protect her little brood from these greedy confederates. One of the coolest, yet wariest rascals in the world, it can scarcely be surprised, but lingers about, just beyond gun-shot range, screaming, as if it said, "Why don't you fire? Fire!--who cares?" I came at length to cherish toward them no little animosity, and would willingly have played Kearsarge upon them, could any challenge have drawn them from port. But during the whole cruise not one of them consoled us with so much as a feather. The flight of this bird meanwhile is magnificent,--so full of powerful grace, of achieving leisure and ease. Nothing can be more striking than its contrast with the labored propulsion of the duck. A few slow waves of the wing, and there it is high in the air; then a droop, a decline, but so light and soft, so exquisitely graduated, that the downward drift of a feather seems lumpish and leaden in the comparison; then again up it goes with such an ease as if it rose by specific levity, like smoke from a chimney in a day of calm; and aloft it wheels, circles, floats, and at length sails on its broad vans away, passing in a few minutes over wide spaces, and yet, with its leisurely stroke, seeming engaged only in airing its pinions. One might fancy it the very spirit of motion imaged in a picturesque symbol.