rbors where garbage was left; for gulls are thrifty
folk and do not waste the food of the world.

From their feeding habits you will know that these beautiful birds are
scavengers, eating things which, if left on the sea or shore, would make
the water foul and the air impure. Thus it is that Nature gives to a
scavenger the duty of service to all living creatures; and the freshness
of the ocean and the cleanness of the sands of the shore are in part a
gift of the gulls, for which we should thank and protect them.

Relish as they might musty bread and mouldy meat, Larie and his mate
enjoyed, too, the sport of catching fresh food; and many a clam hunt
they had in true gull style. They would fly above the water near the
shore, and when they were twenty or thirty feet high, would plunge down
head-first. Then they would poke around for a clam, with their heads and
necks under water and their wings out and partly unfolded, but not
flopping; and a comical sight they were!

[Illustration: _After Larie found a clam, he would fly high into the air
a hundred feet or so, and then drop it._]

[Illustration: _It was not for food alone that Larie and his mate lived
that spring._]

After Larie found a clam, he would fly high into the air a hundred feet
or so above the rocks, and then, stretching way up with his head, drop
the clam from his beak. Easily, with wings fluttering slightly, Larie
would follow the clam, floating gracefully, though quickly, down to
where it had cracked upon the rocks. The morsel in its broken shell was
now ready to eat, for Larie and his mate did not bake their sea-food or
make it into chowder. Cold salad flavored with sea-salt was all they
needed.

Exciting as were these hunts with the flocks of screaming gulls, it was
not for food alone that Larie and his mate lived that spring. For under
the blue of the airy sky there was an ocean, and in that ocean there was
an island, and on that island there was a nest, and in that nest there
was an egg--the first that the mate of Larie had ever laid. And in that
egg was a growing gull, their eldest son--a baby Larie, alone inside his
very first world.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Hexapod Stories_, page 80.]

III

PETER PIPER

One was named Sandy, because Sandy is a Scotch name and there were
blue-bells growing on the rocks; so it seemed right that one of them
should have a Scotch name, and what could be better, after all, than
Sandy for a sandpiper?