Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/225

Rh leading writers on economic or fiscal subjects rarely discuss it or even seem to have any knowledge of its characteristics or historical experience.

The United States is the only civilized country that gives no heed to the world's uniform record of experience, and thinks it desirable to tax both property itself and its shadow.



O my right, to my left, overhead, everywhere, gulls, gulls, gulls! Big gray fellows standing on the wharf edge; white chaps, with black heads, flapping their long, black-tipped wings and making noises that could be likened only to creaky wheelbarrows! Such was my experience one day as I walked out on the pier at San Diego, California, to take the ferryboat across the bay to the charming Coronado peninsula.

Along the wharves and on the muddy flats left bare by the receding tide, the gulls were almost as plentiful and quite as tame as the English sparrows are on the North River piers at New York city. A half dozen sat on the bowsprit of a little coaster that was loading with freight and a few passengers for Los Angeles. Out in the harbor the United States revenue cutter Monterey lay at anchor, ready for coaling up on the morrow. On her spars and flying all about her were scores of gulls, eagerly watching for some scraps of food that might be thrown from the galley.

As our boat steamed across toward the opposite shore we were accompanied by quite an escort of these interesting birds, beautiful to look at in their almost entirely white coats. Watching the flight of one bird that came close alongside the boat, I was impressed with its easy, graceful movements; every time the long, strong wings made a stroke the bird's body seemed to rise as though breasting an invisible wave, the gull all the while turning its head from side to side as if looking for something. I thought of that strange belief, prevalent in certain localities, that gulls are the disembodied spirits of those who have lost friend or relative by drowning at sea. This superstition has been versified by Mr. A. J. Burdick, and the poem is worth quoting in its entirety: