THE CROWS. 



whirlwind swoop, dashed between them and bore away the 

 lizard in its talons. They stared after it with a gape of 

 utter nonplussation, 



" b nd my internal spirit cut a caper," 



as the poet sublimely says, for I could not have slept at 

 night if those crows had enjoyed their disreputable meal. 



I do not know about the Afghans, but a policy of mas- 

 terly inactivity will not do for the crows. Their peculations 

 and insolence always extend to the limits of your toleration, 

 and they keep themselves acquainted with those limits by 

 experiment. I go in for keeping up my prestige with them. 

 I shoot a crow once a month or so and hang it up in ter- 

 rorem. This has such an excellent effect that no crow ever 

 sits on my window and gives three guttural caws in the 

 caverns of its throat, with intent to insult, as they do at 

 other people's houses ; nor are their evening convocations 

 holden on my roof. 



In April and May crows make nests of sticks and line 

 them with coir, or horsehair abstracted from a mattress, or 

 even with soda-water wire stolen from the butler's little 

 hoard ! In these they bring up three or four callow criminals 

 in their own image. I make all such proceedings penal 



