476 THE MAGPIE. 



dress and little speed of wing, it prefers the vicinity of trees with 

 us, and rarely seeks open fields and moors ; hence it is never 

 seen following the plough like the rook, although it has as good 

 a scent for tracing maggots (or blood, as Shakespeare has it). It 

 also lives on maggots, worms, and grubs ; runs and hops nimbly 

 like the daw ; but instead of the croak, caw, or kae-a, it has a 

 chuckling, chattering cry, unlike any other bird, which may 

 have induced Tennyson to say — 



" You'll only hear the magpie gossip 

 Garrulous under a roof of pine ;" 



And made Wordsworth also say in his "Picture of May," 

 that — 



" The magpie chatters with delight." 



As Shakespeare makes Henry VI. curse the evil birth of Gloster, 

 and say — 



" The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time ; 

 And chattering 'pies in dismal discords sung." 



We have only this one species of the genus Pica in Britain. 

 It is common in some of the fir woods about St Andrews, in 

 spite of the deadly law of extermination against this handsome, 

 domestic-inclined bird for merely trying to fulfil its mission in 

 life — no doubt doing as much good as ill in the world, if man 

 could weigh the balance properly. I think the poet Cowper in 

 his " Task" is not far wrong when he says — 



" The sum is this — if man's convenience, health, 

 Or safety interfere, his rights and claims 

 Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs, 

 Else they are all— the meanest things that are — 

 As free to live and to enjoy that life, 

 As God was free to form them at the first, 

 Who, in His sovereign wisdom, made them all." 



I fear the broad, wise law of Nature is unwisely interfered 

 with by the lesser game laws, game preserves, and deer forests 

 of man. where, on the mountain sides and fertile glens of 

 Scotland, the crofter himself is deemed little else than a species 

 of human vermin, who interferes with the sport or profit of 

 the wealthy so-called sportsman. In Norway and Sweden it is 

 upon the most familiar terms with man, naturally inclined to be 

 near his dwellings, like the rook or jackdaw with us. Mr 

 Hewitson says — "In Sweden neither the magpie, nor its nest, 

 nor its young are ever touched ; and in Norway it is one of the 



