The sea and the sky and the shore were at perfect peace on the day when
the young gull first launched into the air, and flew outward over the
green, smooth ocean. Day after day his parents had brought him fish and
squid, until his baby plumage fell from him and his beautiful
wing-feathers shot forth,--clean-webbed and elastic. His strong feet had
carried him for days over the expanse of sand dunes and pebbles, and now
and then he had paddled into deep pools and bathed in the cold salt water.
Most creatures of the earth are limited to one or the other of these two
elements, but now the gull was proving his mastery over a third. The land,
the sea, were left below, and up into the air drifted the beautiful bird,
every motion confident with the instinct of ages.
The usefulness of his mother's immaculate breast now becomes apparent. A
school of small fish basking near the surface rise and fall with the
gentle undulating swell, seeing dimly overhead the blue sky, flecked with
hosts of fleecy white clouds. A nearer, swifter cloud approaches,
hesitates, splashes into their midst,--and the parent gull has caught her
first fish of the day. Instinctively the young bird dives; in his joy of
very life he cries aloud,--the gull-cry which his ancestors of long ago
have handed down to him. At night he seeks the shore and tucks his bill
into his plumage; and all because of something within him, compelling him
to do these things.
But far from being an automaton, his bright eye and full-rounded head
presage higher things. Occasionally his mind breaks through the mist of
instinct and reaches upward to higher activity.
As with the other wild kindred of the ocean, food was the chief object of
the day's search. Fish were delicious, but were not always to be had;
crabs were a treat indeed, when caught unawares, but for mile after mile
along the coast were hosts of mussels and clams,--sweet and lucious, but
incased in an armour of shell, through which there was no penetrating.
However swift a dash was made upon one of these,--always the clam closed a
little quicker, sending a derisive shower of drops over the head of the
gull.
Once, after a week of rough weather, the storm gods brought their battling
to a climax. Great green walls of foaming water crashed upon the rocks,
rending huge boulders and sucking them down into the black depths. Over
and through the spray dashed the gull, answering the wind's howl--shriek
for shriek, poising over the fearful battlefield of sea and shore.
A wave mightier than all hung and curved, and a myriad shell-fish were
torn from their sheltered nooks and hurled high, in air, to fall broken
and helpless among the boulders. The quick eye of the gull saw it all, and
at that instant of intensest chaos of the elements, the brain of the bird
found itself.
Shortly afterward came night and sleep, but the new-found flash of
knowledge was not lost.
The next day the bird walked at low tide into the stronghold of the
shell-fish, roughly tore one from the silky strands of its moorings, and
carrying it far upward let it fall at random among the rocks. The
toothsome morsel was snatched from its crushed shell and a triumphant
scream told of success,--a scream which, could it have been interpreted,
should have made a myriad, myriad mussels shrink within their shells!
From gull to gull, and from flock to flock, the new habit spread,
imitation taking instant advantage of this new source of food. When to-day
we walk along the shore and see flocks of gulls playing ducks and drakes
with the unfortunate shell-fish, give them not too much credit, but think
of some bird which in the long ago first learned the lesson, whether by
chance or, as I have suggested, by observing the victims of the waves.
* * * * *
No scientific facts are these, but merely a logical reasoning deduced from
the habits and traits of the birds as we know them to-day; a theory to
hold in mind while we watch for its confirmation in the beginning of other
new and analogous habits.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
William Wordsworth.