226 Habits of the Magpie. 



a funeral in the village ; and that nine are quite a horrible 

 sight. I have often heard countrymen say that they had rather 

 see any bird than a magpie ; but, upon my asking them the 

 cause of their antipathy to the bird, all the answer that I could 

 get was, that they knew it to be unlucky, and that it always 

 contrived to know what was going to take place. My keeper 

 both hates and fears a magpie ; but self-interest forces upon 

 the fellow the unpleasant task of encouraging the breed, in 

 order to keep well with me. He was once in conversation 

 with the keeper of a neighbouring gentleman, at the door of 

 a little alehouse in the village of Heath, when a magpie flew 

 into a tree hard by. " I must have thee killed," said the gen- 

 tleman's keeper, " otherwise, there will be a blow up betwixt 

 me and my master." " Ah ! " rejoined my keeper, " were I 

 to kill a magpie, my master would soon blow me out of his 

 service." The keeper thought this too good to be lost, and I 

 had it from his own mouth. 



I love in my heart to see a magpie, for it always puts me 

 in mind of the tropics. There is such a rich glow of colour, 

 and such a metallic splendour of plumage, in this bird, that one 

 would almost be apt to imagine it must have found its way 

 here, from the blazing latitudes of the south. 



I am fully aware that it has propensities of a sufficiently pre- 

 datory nature to bring it into general disrepute with civilised 

 man ; but let us remember that, like the carrion crow, it only 

 exercises them to any serious extent for about two months in 

 the spring of the year. At that season, it certainly commences 

 operations with surprising assiduity. Cacus himself, that an- 

 cient thief, when he was about to steal the cows of Hercules, 

 never exhibited greater cunning than that which this bird puts 

 in practice after it has discovered a hen's nest in the yard, 

 or a place of sitting game in the field. Both the magpie and 

 the carrion crow, transfix the eggs with their beaks, and then 

 convey them through the air. 



After the season of incubation is over, the magpie becomes 

 a harmless bird (unless the pilfering of a little unprotected 

 fruit be considered a crime), and spends the remainder of the 

 year in works of great utility to man, by destroying millions 

 of insects, and by preventing the air from being infected with 

 the noxious effluvium arising from the scourings of slaughter- 

 houses. The cattle, too, are in some degree benefited by the 

 prying researches of this sprightly bird. At a certain time of 

 the year, it is often seen on the backs of sheep and oxen, freeing 

 them from vermin, which must be exceedingly troublesome to 

 them. In Demerara, where the magpie does not exist, this 

 friendly office is performed by a hawk. Widely different is 



