No one can dislike more than I the habit which has become so common of late years amongst us--thanks, or rather no thanks, to Mr. Gladstone--of running down our own English ways of dealing with all creation, from Irishmen to black-beetles. I believe, on the contrary, that on the whole there is not, nor ever was, a nation that kept a more active conscience, or tried more honestly to do the right thing all round according to its lights. Nevertheless, I am bound to admit that our methods don’t always succeed, as, for instance, with our treatment of our “submerged tenth,” if that is the accepted name for the section of our people which Mr. G. Booth, in his excellent _Life and Labour in London_, places in his A and B classes (and which, by the way, are only 8.2, and not 10 per cent), or with our seagulls. Some years ago I called your readers’ attention to the rapid demoralisation of these beautiful birds at one of our northern watering-places; how they just floated past the pier-heads hour after hour, waiting for the doles which the holiday folk and their children brought down for them in paper-bags. Our sea-going gulls, I regret to note, are now similarly affected. At any rate, some forty of them diligently followed the steamer in which I sailed for my Easter holiday, from the Liverpool docks till we dropped our pilot and, turned due south off Holyhead. By that time our last meal had been eaten and the remains cast into the sea. The gulls seemed to be quite aware of this; and we left them squabbling over the last scraps of fish and potatoes, or loafing slowly back to Liverpool. Thirty-six hours later we entered the Garonne, and steamed sixty miles up it to Bordeaux. For all that distance there were plenty of French gulls on the water or in the air, but, so far from following us, not one of them seemed to take the least notice of us, but all went on quietly with their fishing or courting; and yet our cook’s mate must have thrown out as much broken victuals after breakfast in the Garonne as he did after luncheon or dinner on the Welsh coast. It cannot be because the French gulls are Republicans, for the Republic has, if anything, increased the national appetite for unearned loaves and fishes. It is certainly very odd; but, anyhow, I hope our gulls will not take to more self-respecting ways of life, for it is a real treat to watch them in the ship’s wake, without effort, often without perceptible motion of the wings, keeping up the fourteen knots an hour. The Captain and I fraternised over the gulls, whom he loves, and will not allow to be shot at from his ship. “I’ll shoot whether you like it or not,” insisted a sporting gent on a recent voyage. “If you do, I’ll put you in irons,” retorted the Captain; whereupon the sporting gent collapsed--a pity, I think, for an action for false imprisonment would have been interesting under the circumstances. I fancy the Captain is right, but must look up the law after Easter.