THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER, 



tion, and mouth agape, gasping from the heat. With his 

 pale grey mantle, snow-white breast, and black "points," 

 the butcher-bird would be handsome, but for his villainous 

 eyebrows and generally assassinous aspect. Nothing living 

 comes amiss to him, from the sparrow, if he can surprise it, 

 down to the large fussy black ant, which comes hurrying 

 along, to catch the train or something, with its tail cocked 

 over its head, till it is suddenly arrested and introduced into 

 that atram ingluviem where a dozen of its fellow-citizens 

 have gone before it. Cr ernes aux fourmis must be as 

 good as the Frenchman thought it. Now, wherever this 

 bird comes, comes also a smaller bird, with the same 

 white breast, the same shaggy black eyebrows, and the 

 same brigand look, and it stands close by and shrieks and 

 hisses and heaps opprobrious epithets on the other. This 

 is a cousin of the bird it vilifies. Lanius is the surname of 

 both ; the Christian name of the big one is Lahtora, and of 

 the other Hardwickii. (It was named after one General 

 Hardwicke, poor man ! but he did nothing wrong.) And 

 as the little one hisses out its impotent rage, it cocks the 

 stump of a tail which was once long and flowing as that 

 which adorns the objects of its wrath. Short as the stump 

 is, thereby hangs a tale, and I happen to know it 



