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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
DINNER-PARTIES OUT OF DOORS.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
QUEEN MARGERIE.
ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
VACCINATION.
NO TEARS.
No. 43.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1884.
DINNER-PARTIES OUT OF DOORS.
Walking one wintery day along the promenadeof a well-known Lancashire watering-place, alarge notice-board at the entrance of the pierattracted our attention. A closer inspectionshowed that it bore the announcement: ‘Feedingthe sea-gulls from the pier-head every day atnoon.’ Curious to see what manner of performancethis might be, we paid the entrance-money,took a ticket for the tram-carriage which wasjust about to start, and speedily found ourselvesbeing whirled smoothly along towards the endof the ‘first pier,’ as it is called, which stretchesacross the sands for something like three-quartersof a mile towards the deep channel. A shortwalk was necessary before reaching the end ofthe extension pier, and there we found numbers ofvisitors congregated, all, like ourselves, evidentlywaiting for the performance to begin. Around,lay huge baskets of fish-offal; but where werethe expected guests? On every side, far as theeye could reach, was a long expanse of flat sand,merging into the sea-line, with not a vestige ofrock to afford foothold or shelter for wild-fowlof any kind. Yet, stay. By the margin of thewaves, where it is now low water, are what looklike huge glistening white boulders, forming a continuousboundary, whose snowy surface reflectsthe light, and glitters and flashes under the raysof a December sun, set in so blue a sky as morenearly to approach that of Italy than any we haveyet seen in our sombre-tinted British Isles.
Twelve o’clock strikes; a piercing whistlesounds, and even while we are watching, thesegranite boulders—as, despite the geological formationof the place, we persist in fancying them tobe—literally take to themselves wings, and flytowards us, a nearer approach showing themto be vast aggregations of sea-gulls, which havebeen waiting till the appointed signal shouldsummon them to dine. No transformationscene in a pantomime ever took place withmore startling rapidity. Round the pier-head,where all had been still and quiet, was nowthe bustle and whirring noise made by countlessgulls, each one intent upon getting ashare of the good things provided. On theycome; now swooping along in graceful flightrigh