96 Wild Birds and their Haunts 



was accused of the theft and delivered over to the hands 

 of justice. The accused, according to the barbaious 

 custom of that period, was put to the torture, and, a con- 

 fession of the crime being thus extorted, tne poor girl 

 was condemned to die. Six months after trie lost plate 

 was discovered behind a mass of tiles on an old house, 

 where a tame magpie had concealed them and continued 

 to add to the hoard. The mass was founded on account 

 of the innocent girl who had fallen a victim to an exe- 

 crable law. This story was no doubt the origin of the 

 well-known melodrama, "The Maid and the Magpie." 



A famous naturalist author mentions that he once saw 

 " taken out of a magpie's nest a crooked sixpence, of 

 which some village fair one had haply been despoiled, a 

 tailor's thimble, two metal buttons, a small plated buckle, 

 and three or four bits of broken crockery." At the same 

 time he exculpates the Jackdaw (Corvus monedula), for 

 want of proof, of a similar charge made against him. 



11 At country churches," he says, " where it frequents 

 the steeple, a situation to which it is very partial, we have 

 heard it accused of a very profane theft. At those places 

 in the North a collection is made in a salver outside the 

 door, and if a sixpence or a shilling finds its way among 

 the copper donations, the jackdaw is accused of pouncing 

 down and purloining it ; but there is no proof against it." 



1 ' The Divers (Colymbi) of Louisiana," says M. 

 Dupratz, ' ' when they see the fire of the touch-pan, dive 

 so nimbly that the lead cannot hit them, for which reason 

 they are called lead-eaters." 



Observers repeatedly see the same quickness of eye 

 exemplified in the Cormorant (Carbo cormoranus) of our 

 own seas ; for, though approached with the greatest 

 caution, and when the bird has not manifested any fear, 

 but was skimming about on the water, the instant the 

 powder flashed in the pan it would dive down and escape 

 the danger. 



It may be worth mentioning that animals born with 

 perfect eyes can use them the instant they enter the world. 

 Sir James Hall, when making experiments on hatching, 

 observed a chicken in the act of breaking through the shell, 



