MAGPIE FIELDS 



THERE were ten magpies together on the Qth of Septem- 

 ber 1 88 1, in a field of clover beside a road but twelve 

 miles from Charing Cross. Ten magpies would be a 

 large number to see at once anywhere in the south, and 

 not a little remarkable so near town. The magpies were 

 doubtless young birds which had packed, and were bred 

 in the nests in the numerous elms of the hedgerows 

 about there. At one time they were scattered over the 

 field, their white and black colours dotted everywhere, 

 so that they seemed to hold entire possession of it. 



Then a knot of them gathered together, more came 

 up, and there they were all ten fluttering and restlessly 

 moving. After a while they passed on into the next 

 field, which was stubble, and, collected in a bunch, were 

 even more conspicuous there, as the stubble did not 

 conceal them so much as the clover. That was on 

 the gth of September ; by the end of the month weeds 

 had grown so high that the stubble itself in that field 

 had disappeared, and from a distance it looked like 

 pasture. In the stubble the magpies remained till I 

 could watch them n6 longer. 



A short time afterwards, on the iyth of September, 

 looking over the gateway of an adjacent field which had 

 been wheat, then only recently carried, a pheasant sud- 

 denly appeared rising up out of the stubble ; and then a 

 second, and a third and fourth. So tall were the weeds 



