SHELLS KOBBED BY BIRDS. 119 



enough how they had been broken. Two or three of 

 the shells were unbroken ; they had evidently resisted 

 all the batterings of the bird, and, as a last resource, 

 he had endeavoured to get as much as he could from 

 the natural aperture, for the poor snail, in each case, 

 was cut and nibbled as far as a bird's beak could 

 reach it. 



But these were not the only shells that I found here. 

 Scattered about on the downs, three or four hundred 

 feet above the sea, I found several shells of the com- 

 mon limpets that congregate in thousands on the rock 

 below. Who could have brought these hither? I 

 should incline to reply, the jackdaws that I see perch- 

 ing on the ledges of the precipice yonder. If human 

 hands had brought them hither, the mollusk would 

 have been detached quite clean ; and that whether it 

 were done for the sake of the shell, as by children to 

 play with (a most unlikely supposition, however), or 

 for the sake of eating the animal. In the former case, 

 the human fingers remove the flesh clean out, and in 

 the latter case, i.e., in being cooked, it drops spon- 

 taneously ; but in each of these shells the fragments 

 of flesh remained adhering all round the concavity, 

 having evidently been picked out piecemeal by an 

 industrious bird. 



What those birds were there is little room left for 

 doubt, when one remembers the appetite of the Cor 

 vidce for mollusks, and observes how numerous the 

 jackdaws are hereabouts. Indeed, it is by far the 

 commonest bird of the crow kind in the neighbour- 



