Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/227

Rh this theory, and I take the liberty of quoting in part from the account given in the Scientific American:

"On a late trip of one of the steamers plying between Portland and San Francisco the question came up among the passengers as to



whether the gulls which appeared around the ship each morning were the same birds as had been with the ship on the day previous. To test the matter, a line and fishhook were procured, and with a bait of salt pork the fishing for a sea gull was commenced.

"The first cast of the line was successful, a big gray bird swooping down on the bait. He was hauled aboard and found to be uninjured, the hook having caught in one of the glands of the beak, from which it was readily loosened. After detaching the hook a strip of red flannel was brought and carefully tied around the gull's left leg by one of the seamen of the steamer, the bird being then turned loose. Circling for a moment in the air, the gull started toward the distant blue streak which denoted the coast line, and it was generally allowed that each day brought a new contingent of gulls to follow the steamer and pick up the waste scraps from the table; but on coming on deck after breakfast the next morning there was the flannel-bedecked gull to be seen, the most clamorous of all the birds. To test the gull's reasoning power, if it had any, the same line and bait was drifted astern, the gull caught the day before being one of the first to strike for it."

During my stay at Coronado Beach I remember one delightful afternoon spent watching the birds as I lay stretched at full