As noon approached, the hour when "birds their wise siesta take," although the plow did not cease its monotonous round, the birds retired in a body to the still untouched middle of the field, and settled themselves for their "nooning," dusting themselves--their snowy plumes!--like hens on an ash heap, sitting about in knots like parties of ducks, preening and shaking themselves out, or going at once to sleep, according to their several tastes. Half an hour's rest sufficed for the more active spirits, and then they treated us, their patient observers, to an aërial exhibition. A large number, perhaps three quarters of the flock, rose in a body and began a spiral flight. Higher and higher they went, in wider and wider circles, till, against the white clouds, they looked like a swarm of midges, and against the blue the eye could not distinguish them. Then from out of the sky dropped one after another, leaving the soaring flock looking wonderfully ethereal and gauzy in the clear air, with the sun above him, almost like a spirit bird gliding motionless through the ether till he alighted at last quietly beside his fellows on the ground. In another half hour they were all behind the plow again, hard at work. When we had looked our fill, we straightway sought out and questioned some of the wise men among the "peculiar people." This is what we learned: that when plowing is over the birds retire to their home, an island in the lake, where, being eminently social birds, their nests are built in a community. Their beneficent service to mankind does not end with the plowing season, for when that is over they turn their attention to the fish that are brought into the lake by the fresh-water streams, at once strangled by its excess of salt, and their bodies washed up on the shore. What would become of the human residents if that animal deposit were left for the fierce sun to dispose of, may perhaps be imagined. The gull should, indeed, be a sacred bird in Utah.