of Devonshire and other maritime places, but those of the blackheaded gulls are considered the best, and often substituted for plover eggs. The flesh of gulls was considered by the ancients unfit for the food of man; not so by the moderns, who, though probably no great admirers of it, have not entirely rejected it. Hence Willoughby tells us (1678) that “the sea-crows (blackheaded gulls) yearly build and breed at Norbury in Staffordshire, in an island in the middle of a great pool, in the grounds of Mr Skrimshew, distant at least 30 miles from the sea. About the beginning of March hither they come; about the end of April they build. They lay three, four, or five eggs of a dirty green colour, spotted with dark brown, two inches long, of an ounce and half weight, blunter at one end. The first down of the young is ash-coloured, and spotted with black. The first feathers on the back, after they are fledged, are black. When the young are almost come to their full growth, those entrusted by the lord of the soil drive them from off the island through the pool, into nets set in the banks to take them. When they have taken them, they feed them with the entrails of beasts; and when they are fat, sell them for fourpence or fivepence a-piece. They take yearly about one thousand two hundred young ones; whence may be computed what profit the lord makes of them. About the end of July they all fly away and leave the island.” And in Feroe, according to Landt (1798), the flesh of the kittiwake is not only eaten, but considered “well-tasted.” As pets, gulls have always on the sea-coast been favourites, Gesner quotes from Oppian, “That gulls are much attached to man--familiarly attend upon him; and, when watching the fishermen, as they draw their nets and divide the spoil, clamorously demand their share.” In our own boyish experience we knew one, poor Tom, which grew up under our care to maturity, and, unrestrained by any artificial means, flew away and returned again as inclination impelled it--recognising and answering our voice even when flying high in air above. But, alas! like too many pets, he fell a sacrifice to the loss of that instinct which would have led him to shun danger. He joined a crowd of water-fowl on a small lake on the Start Bay Sands. His companions, alarmed at the approach of the fowler, flew unharmed away; but poor Tom, with ill-judged confidence, left the water and walked fearlessly toward the enemy of all winged creatures, who could not allow even a gull to escape, and, alas! he was the next moment stretched lifeless on the sand. Here we shall arrest our pen. Perhaps we have dwelt too long on this interesting genus of birds, and yet we would hope that some of our readers may profit by our remarks, and be led to watch with an inquisitive eye the many animated beings which surround them, and thus to read in Nature’s never-tiring, never-exhausted volume, new lessons of wisdom--new proofs of the exalted intelligence which has created every