viction, for though I admired it, yet there seemed always to be in it some want which I felt, but was unable to define. It puzzled me, but at last I discovered what it was, and my discovery, which acquits the bird and is to the honour of nature, I will give as I wrote it down directly after I had made it.
"One of the great skuas has now flown right out to sea. There its flight, which is peculiar, becomes instantly very graceful. Descending with a sweep, which, though majestic, is yet soft and gentle, it seems about to sink upon the waves, when, almost as it touches them, it glides again softly upwards, to descend once more in the same manner. Thus, ever rising and sinking, seeming always about to rest, yet never resting, it glides, tireless, and seems to coquet with the sea. On land, too, these wide circling sweeps had had a grace and charm, but it had not entirely pleased the eye. Something had been absent, but what that something was, it had been beyond me to say. Now, I knew it. What it wanted had been the illimitable plain of the ocean which, in a moment, took away all heaviness from the form and all harshness from the colouring. The sombreness of the sea blends now with its own, and the waves are moving with its own motion. All is in harmony, the picture has found its frame." Gulls, too, are more graceful when they sweep over the sea than the shore near it. They have then softness and expanse as a background. The latter, I think, is the more important, and may be unconsciously demanded by association of ideas. Earth had not been wide enough for the great skua.
Often when one of the great skuas is circling
