increased and turned to fear; and those that were sitting on their nests got up and came close to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others and join in the loud chorus of alarm.  It was a wonderful sound.  Not like the tempest of noise that may be heard at the breeding-season at Lundy Island, and at many other stations where birds of several species mix their various voices—­the yammeris and the yowlis, and skrykking, screeking, skrymming scowlis, and meickle moyes and shoutes, of old Dunbar’s wonderful onomatopoetic lines.  Here there was only one species, with a clear resonant cry, and as every bird uttered that one cry, and no other, a totally different effect was produced.  The herring-gull and lesser black-backed gull resemble each other in language as they do in general appearance; both have very powerful and clear voices unlike the guttural black-headed and common gull.  But the herring-gull has a shriller, more piercing voice, and resembles the black-backed species just as, in human voices, a boy’s clear treble resembles a baritone.  Both birds have a variety of notes; and both, when the nest is threatened with danger, utter one powerful importunate cry, which is repeated incessantly until the danger is over.  And as the birds breed in communities, often very populous, and all clamour together, the effect of so many powerful and unisonant voices is very grand; but it differs in the two species, owing to the quality of their voices being different; the storm of sound produced by the black-backs is deep and solemn, while that of the herring-gulls has a ringing sharpness almost metallic.

It is probable that in the case I am describing the effect of sharpness and resonance was heightened by the position of the birds, perched motionless, scattered about on the face of the perpendicular wall of rock, all with their beaks turned in my direction, raining their cries upon me.  It was not a monotonous storm of cries, but rose and fell; for after two or three minutes the excitement would abate somewhat and the cries grow fewer and fewer; then the infection would spread again, bird after bird joining the outcry; and after a while there would be another lull, and so on, wave following wave of sound.  I could have spent hours, and the hours would have seemed like minutes, listening to that strange chorus of ringing chiming cries, so novel was its effect, and unlike that of any other tempest of sound produced by birds which I had ever heard.  When by way of a parting caress and benediction (given and received) I dipped my hands in Branscombe’s clear streamlet it was with a feeling of tender regret that was almost a pain.  For who does not make a little inward moan, an Eve’s Lamentation, an unworded, “Must I leave thee, Paradise?” on quitting any such sweet restful spot, however brief his stay in it may have been?  But when I had climbed to the summit of the great down on the east side of the valley and looked on the wide land and wider sea flashed with