Gulls Perched on Cedars

1895

The captain of a steamer that plies along the New England coast, and that was passing one of the rugged, lonely islands off the Maine shore, pointed to an enormous flock of gulls that whitened the rocks, the surface of the sea and the branches of the cedars that cling to the hard soil. "There," said he, "what do you think of that? And yet if you turn to a book on natural history they'll tell you that gulls won't perch on trees. Some fool sailors believe that the petrels, or Mother Caray's chickens, never alight, even on the water, but are always on the wing. They don't use their eyes. And some of these scientific fellows are as bad as the sailors." — Lewiston Journal.