ed golden bill. If the morsel is too large for
him to swallow, look how quickly three or four other gulls will follow
him, trying to take it away. How he turns and twists and dodges, and
how cleverly they head him off and hang on his airy trail, like winged
hounds, giving tongue with thin and querulous voices, half laughing and
half crying and altogether hungry. He cannot say a word, for his mouth
is full. He gulps hastily at his booty, trying to get it down before
the others catch him. But it is too big for his gullet, and he drops it
in the very act and article of happy deglutition. The largest and
whitest of his pursuers scoops up the morsel almost before it touches
the waves, and flaps away to enjoy his piratical success in some quiet
retreat.

What a variety of cooking the gulls enjoy from the steamships and
sailing-vessels of various nationalities which visit Manhattan! French
cooks, Italian, German, Spanish, English, Swedish--cooks of all races
minister to their appetites. Whenever a panful of scraps is thrown out
from the galley, a flock of gulls may be seen fluttering over their
fluent _table d'hote_. Their shrill, quavering cries of joy and
expectancy sound as if the machinery of their emotions were worked by
rusty pulleys; their sharp eyes glisten, and their great wings flap and
whirl together in a confusion of white and gray. It is said that they
do useful service as scavengers of the harbor. No doubt; but to me they
commend themselves chiefly as visible embodiments and revelations of
the mystery, wonder, and gladness of flight.

What do we know about it, after all? We call this long-winged fellow
_Larus argerdatus smithsonianus_. We find that his normal temperature
is about two degrees higher than ours, and that he breathes faster, and
that his bones are lighter, and that his body is full of air-sacs,
fitting him to fly. But how does he do it? How does he poise himself on
an invisible ledge of air,

"Motionless as a cloud ...
That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth altogether if it move at all?"

How does he sail after a ship, with wings outspread, against the wind,
never seeming to move a feather? You understand how a kite mounts upon
the breeze: the string holds it from going back, so it must go up. But
where is the string that holds the gull?

I like these city gulls because they come to us in winter, when the
gypsy part of our nature is most in need of comforting rem