214 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



day to food and amusement." The yellow, widely- 

 gaping bills of the fledgling wagtails, as they hold 

 their four heads straight up, in the nest, together, 

 look just like delicate little vases of Venetian glass, 

 made by Salviati ; or, treating them all as one, they 

 resemble an artistic central table-ornament, of the 

 same manufacture. It is the inside that one sees. 

 Just round the edge, is a thin rim of light, bright 

 yellow, whilst all the rest is a deep, shining gamboge 

 — not as it looks when painted on anything, but 

 the colour of a cake of it — " all transfigured with 

 celestial light." No prettier design than this could 

 be found, I am sure, for a beaker. Wagtails — I am 

 speaking, always, of the water-wagtail — collect a 

 number of flies, or other insects, as they run about, 

 over the grass, before swallowing them, or flying, 

 with them, to feed their young— that pretty office, 

 which has been dwelt upon only from one point of 

 view. Marry ! when a tigress carries off a man to her 

 cubs, and watches them play with him — an account 

 of which, I believe a true one, I have read — we see 

 it from another, such shallow, partial twitterers as we 

 are. There is as much of beneficence in the one thing, 

 I suppose, as the other — the flies, at least, would 

 think so, creatures that, but a moment ago, were as 

 bright, happy, and ethereal as the bird itself — 

 their tiger. 



*' Oh yet we trust that, somehow, good 

 Will be the final goal of ill." 



Why, yes, one must go on trusting, I suppose 

 (nothing else for it), but meanwhile one of this 

 pair of wagtails has a good-sized something in 



