130 LEAVES FROM THE 



of musket-balls. She fell between her cubs, and died licking 

 their wounds.* 



Birds, at other times tlie most timid of creatures, will 

 boldly attack the spoiler of their nests and young. 

 Thrushes, and even smaller birds, have been known to 

 do battle with magpies, jays, crows, hawks, nest-robbing 

 school-boys, and even men. The common hen will show 

 fight to kites, dogs, cats, and unfeathered bipeds if they 

 come near her chickens with sinister intentions, or even 

 if they approach too closely. White, in his delightful 

 book, mentions an instance of the fury with which some 

 plundered hens wreaked their vengeance upon a reiver 

 when, after repeated predatory acts, they had him in their 

 power. He relates that a neighbouring gentleman, one 

 summer, had lost most of his chickens by a sparrow-hawk, 

 that came gliding down between a fagot-pile and the 

 end of his house to the place where the coops stood. 

 The o^vner, vexed to see his flock diminishing, hung a 

 setting-net adroitly between the pile and the house, into 

 which the caitiff dashed, and was caught : — 



Resentment (continues the historian of Selborne) suggested the 

 law of retaliation ; he therefore chpped the hawk's wings, cut off 

 his talons, and fixing a cork on his bill, threw him down among 

 the brood-hens. Imagination cannot paint the scene that ensued ; 

 the expressions that fear, rage, and revenge inspired were new, or 

 at least such as had been unnoticed before. The exasperated 

 matrons upbraided, they execrated, they insulted, they triumphed. 

 In a word, they never desisted fi-om buffeting their adversary till 

 they had torn him in an hundi-ed pieces. 



Ready and willing, however, as the parents are to de- 

 fend their young against fearful odds, that modification 

 of reason, which I have observed frequently to accom- 

 pany mere instinct, operates occasionally to induce them 

 to acquiesce patiently when help is required and given. 



Every one has heard of partridges falling into cracks ; 



* Annual Register, 1775, signed, 'Marinus. 



