92 THE CARRION CROW. 
the distance. Then, again, how eager is his pursuit ! 
—how loud his croaking !—how inveterate his hos- 
tility! when he has espied a fox stealing away 
from the hounds, under the covert of some friendly 
hedge. His compact and well-built figure, too, and 
the fine jet black of his plumage, are, in my eye, 
beautifully ornamental to the surrounding sylvan 
scenery. 
A very small share of precaution, on the part of 
the henwife, would effectually preserve her chickens 
and her ducklings from the dreaded grasp of the 
carrion crow. Let her but attend to the suggestion 
of setting her early ducks’ eggs under a hen, and let 
her keep that hen from rambling, and she will find 
her best hopes realised. As for the game, I verily 
believe that, in most cases, the main cause of the 
destruction of its eggs may be brought home to 
the gamekeeper himself. This unrelenting butcher 
of our finest and rarest British birds goes, forsooth, 
and makes a boast to his master that he has a 
matter of five hen pheasants hatching in such a 
wood, and as many partridges in the adjacent 
meadows, This man probably never reflects that, 
in his rambles to find the nests of these birds, he 
has made a track, which will often be followed up 
by the cat, the fox, and the weasel, to the direful 
cost of the sitting birds; and, moreover, that by his 
own obtrusive and unexpected presence in a place 
which ought to be free from every kind of inspection, 
whether of man or beast, he has driven the bird 
precipitately from her nest, by which means the eggs 
