048 ACCIPITER NISUS. 



Montagu, " we have frequently known them carry 

 away half a brood of chickens before the thief was dis- 

 covered. They fly low, skim over, a poultry yard, 

 snatch up a chick, and are out of sight in an instant.''^ 

 " A neighbouring gentleman," says the amiable and 

 justly celebrated author of ' The Natural History of 

 Selborne,' ** one summer had lost most of his chickens 

 by a sparrow hawk, that came gliding down between a 

 fagot pile and the end of his house,- to the place where 

 the coops stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see 

 his flock thus diminishing, hung a setting net adroit- 

 ly between the pile and the house, into which the caitiff" 

 dashed and was entangled. Resentment suggested the 

 law of retaliation ; he therefore clipped the hawk's 

 wings, cut ofF his talons, and, fixing a cork on his bill, 

 threw him down among the brood hens. Imaginatior^ 

 cannot paint the scene that ensued; the expressions 

 that fear, rage, and revenge, inspired, were new, or at 

 least such as had been unnoticed before. The exas- 

 perated matrons upbraided, they execrated, they in- 

 sulted, they triumphed. In a word, they never de- 

 sisted from bufl^eting their adversary till they had torn 

 him in a hundred pieces." There was little sport, and 

 much bad spirit, here ; the gentleman manifested a 

 pitiful spite, for which he ought to have been tarred 

 and feathered. The hawk naturally conceived he had 

 as good a right to the chickens as his featherless cou- 

 sin, who ought first by gentle means to have persuaded 

 him of his error, or, these failing, to have driven him 

 oflr or shot him. The conservative organ was no doubt 

 highly developed in him, but it must have been mere- 

 ly a process of that of selfishness. Cruelty and bad 



