The Natural History of Selborne 213 



This affection sublimes the passions, quickens the invention, 

 and sharpens the sagacity of the brute creation. Thus an 

 hen, just become a mother, is no longer that placid bird she 

 used to be, but with feathers standing on end, wings hovering, 

 and clucking note, she runs about like one possessed. Dams 

 will throw themselves in the way of the greatest danger in 

 order to avert it from their progeny. Thus a partridge will 

 tumble along before a sportsman in order to draw away the 

 dogs from her helpless covey. In the time of nidification the 

 most feeble birds will assault the most rapacious. All the 

 hirundines of a village are up in arms at the sight of an hawk, 

 whom they will persecute till he leaves that district. A very 

 exact observer has often remarked that a pair of ravens nest- 

 ing in the rock of Gibraltar would suffer no vulture or eagle 

 to rest near the station, but would drive them from the hill 

 with an amazing fury ; even the blue thrush at the season of 

 breeding would dart out from the clefts of the rocks to chase 

 away the kestril, or the sparrow-hawk. If you stand near the 

 nest of a bird that has young, she will not be induced 

 to betray them by an inadvertent fondness, but will wait 

 about at a distance with meat in her mouth for an hour 

 together. 



Should I farther corroborate what I have advanced above 

 by some anecdotes which I probably may have mentioned 

 before in conversation, yet you will, I trust, pardon the repeti- 

 tion for the sake of the illustration. 



The flycatcher of the "Zoology" (the Stoparola of Ray) 

 builds every year in the vines that grow on the walls of my 

 house. A pair of these little birds had one year inadvertently 

 placed their nest on a naked bough, perhaps in a shady 

 time, not being aware of the inconvenience that followed. 

 But an hot sunny season coming on before the brood 

 was half-fledged, the reflection of the wall became insup- 

 portable, and must inevitably have destroyed the tender 

 young, had not affection suggested an expedient, and 

 prompted the parent birds to hover over the nest all the 

 hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths gaping 



