GULL

gull, sir william withey, 1st bart. (1816-1890), english physician, was the youngest son of john gull, a barge-owner and wharfinger of thorpe-le-soken, essex, and was born on the 31st of december 1816 at colchester. he began life as a schoolmaster, but in 1837 benjamin harrison, the treasurer of guy's hospital, who had noticed his ability, brought him up to london from the school at lewes where he was usher, and gave him employment at the hospital, where he also gained permission to attend the lectures. in 1843 he was made a lecturer in the medical school of the hospital, in 1851 he was chosen an assistant physician, and in 1856 he became full physician. in 1847 he was elected fullerian professor of physiology in the royal institution, retaining the post for the usual three years, and in 1848 he delivered the gulstonian lectures at the college of physicians, where he filled every office of honour but that of president. he died in london on the 29th of january 1890 after a series of paralytic strokes, the first of which had occurred nearly three years previously. he was created a baronet in 1872, in recognition of the skill and care he had shown in attending the prince of wales during his attack of typhoid in 1871. sir william gull's fame rested mainly on his success as a clinical practitioner; as he said himself, he was "a clinical physician or nothing." this success must be largely ascribed to his remarkable powers of observation, and to the great opportunities he enjoyed for gaining experience of disease. he was sometimes accused of being a disbeliever in drugs. that was not the case, for he prescribed drugs like other physicians when he considered them likely to be beneficial. he felt, however, that their administration was only a part of the physician's duties, and his mental honesty and outspokenness prevented him from deluding either himself or his patients with unwarranted notions of what they can do. but though he regarded medicine as primarily an art for the relief of physical suffering, he was far from disregarding the scientific side of his profession, and he made some real contributions to medical science. his papers were printed chiefly in _guy's hospital reports_ and in the proceedings of learned societies: among the subjects he wrote about were cholera, rheumatic fever, taenia, paraplegia and abscess of the brain, while he distinguished for the first time (1873) the disease now known as myxoedema, describing it as a "cretinoid state in adults." gull (welsh _gwylan_, breton, _goelann_, whence fr. _goeland_), the name commonly adopted, to the almost entire exclusion of the o. eng. mew (icel. _mafur_, dan. _maage_, swedish _mase_, ger. _meve_, dutch _meeuw_, fr. _mouette_), for a group of sea-birds widely and commonly known, all belonging to the genus _larus_ of linnaeus, which subsequent systematists have broken up in a very arbitrary and often absurd fashion. the family _laridae_ is composed of two chief groups, _larinae_ and _sterninae_--the gulls and the terns, though two other subfamilies are frequently counted, the skuas (_stercorariinae_), and that formed by the single genus _rhynchops_, the skimmers; but there seems no strong reason why the former should not be referred to the _larinae_ and the latter to the _sterninae_. taking the gulls in their restricted sense, howard saunders, who has subjected the group to a rigorous revision (_proc. zool. society_, 1878, pp. 155-211), admits forty-nine species of them, which he places in five genera instead of the many which some prior investigators had sought to establish. of the genera recognized by him, _pagophila_ and _rhodostethia_ have but one species each, _rissa_ and _xema_ two, while the rest belong to _larus_. the _pagophila_ is the so-called ivory-gull, _p. eburnea_, names which hardly do justice to the extreme whiteness of its plumage, to which its jet-black legs offer a strong contrast. the young, however, are spotted with black. an inhabitant of the most northern seas, examples, most commonly young birds of the year, find their way in winter to more temperate shores. its breeding-place has seldom been discovered, and the first of its eggs ever seen by ornithologists was brought home by sir l. m'clintock in 1853 from cape krabbe (_journ. r. dubl. society_, i. 60, pl. 1); others were subsequently obtained by dr malmgren in spitsbergen. of the species of _rissa_, one is the abundant and well-known kittiwake, _r. tridactyla_, of circumpolar range, breeding, however, also in comparatively low latitudes, as on the coasts of britain, and in winter frequenting southern waters. the other is _r. brevirostris_, limited to the north pacific, between alaska and kamchatka. the singular fact requires to be noticed that in both these species the hind toe is generally deficient, but that examples of each are occasionally found in which this functionless member has not wholly disappeared. we have then the genus _larus_, which ornithologists have attempted most unsuccessfully to subdivide. it contains the largest as well as the smallest of gulls. in some species the adults assume a dark-coloured head every breeding-season, in others any trace of dark colour is the mark of immaturity. the larger species prey fiercely on other kinds of birds, while the smaller content themselves with a diet of small animals, often insects and worms. but however diverse be the appearance, structure or habits of the extremities of the series of species, they are so closely connected by intermediate forms that it is hard to find a gap between them that would justify a generic division. forty-three species of this genus are recognized by saunders. about fifteen belong to europe and fourteen to north america, of which (excluding stragglers) some five only are common to both countries. our knowledge of the geographical distribution of several of them is still incomplete. some have a very wide range, others very much the reverse, as witness _l. fuliginosus_, believed to be confined to the galapagos, and _l. scopulinus_ and _l. bulleri_ to new zealand,--the last indeed perhaps only to the south island. the largest species of the group are the glaucous gull and greater black-backed gull, _l. glaucus_ and _l. marinus_, of which the former is circumpolar, and the latter nearly so--not being hitherto found between labrador and japan. the smallest species is the european _l. minutus_, though the north american _l. philadelphia_ does not much exceed it in size. many of the gulls congregate in vast numbers to breed, whether on rocky cliffs of the sea-coast or on healthy islands in inland waters. some of the settlements of the black-headed or "peewit" gull, _l. ridibundus_, are a source of no small profit to their proprietors,--the eggs, which are rightly accounted a great delicacy, being taken on an orderly system up to a certain day, and the birds carefully protected. ross's or the roseate gull, _rhodostethia rosea_, forms a well-marked genus, distinguished not so much by the pink tint of its plumage (for that is found in other species) but by its small dove-like bill and wedge-shaped tail. it is an exceedingly scarce bird, and beyond its having an arctic habitat, little has yet been ascertained about it. more rare still is one of the species of _xema_, _x. furcatum_, of which only two specimens, both believed to have come from the galapagos, have been seen. its smaller congener sabine's gull, _x. sabinii_, is more common, and has been found breeding both in arctic america and in siberia, and several examples, chiefly immature birds, have been obtained in the british islands. both species of _xema_ are readily distinguished from all other gulls by their forked tails. (a. n.)