is responsible for this? Surely not gulls! And never having seen a peregrine falcon here, I have got to not much believe in him. I have seen no sign of such a thing on the part of the great skuas. The others, I think, are only robbers, or at least could hardly kill a puffin, whose beak should be more powerful than their own. It is somewhat of a mystery to me.
One more word upon the puffin. He is strongly ritualistic, if not actually a papist. I find it, as is so often the case, difficult to be sure which. See the whole series of pretty little genuflexions that he makes after coming down upon a rock, and then consider his vestments, his surplice—if that is the proper thing—"his rich dalmatic and maniple fine," his "rochet and pall," and so on—they are all there, I feel certain, for not otherwise could he look so extraordinary. His beak, too, if he only open it the least little bit in the world, is a bishop's mitre, and, for the ring, he wears it round his eye. "Pope," indeed, is one of his local names, but, on the whole, I class him as a ritualist, for he "out-herods Herod." Whether he secedes to Rome ever, or as near there as the mouth of the Tiber, I don't quite know; but if he does 'tis no matter, for he is sure to come back again.
