264 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



More recently we have met with an instance of 

 such astonishing perseverance exhibited by a pair 

 of these birds in their labours of nidification, that 

 we cannot refrain from adding it. A thatched and 

 ivied cottage on the Uppark estate had been un- 

 tenanted and undisturbed for several months during 

 the year 1868, and in the following spring preparations 

 were made for putting it in substantial repair for the 

 reception of a future occupant. A hundred years back 

 it was a farmhouse, chiefly remarkable in its internal 

 arrangements on the ground floor, for its primitive 

 and spacious fire-place, totally innocent of grate or 

 any other modern innovation, and this with its charac- 

 teristic chimney corners, still occupies nearly the whole * 

 of one side of the apartment. On entering the cottage 

 towards the latter end of April, the workmen were 

 surprised to find this wide space completely choked 

 up with sticks, twigs and scraps of wood, and on 

 looking up the chimney, they found that this also was 

 crammed with similar materials from bottom nearly to 

 top. It was evident that a pair of jackdaws had pro- 

 jected an establishment in the chimney, and, in endea- 

 vouring to carry out their intention, had failed at the 

 outset to appreciate the very serious engineering diffi- 

 culty, considering their limited resources, of lodging 

 their nest inside the upper part of a perpendicular shaft 

 gradually widening downwards. Nothing daunted, 

 however, by the repeated subsidences which their 

 treacherous foundations must have undergone, they 

 had persistently continued the accumulation of build- 

 ing materials until, as we have seen, the lining of the 

 nest when completed would have rested on a pile of 

 scraps some fifteen or sixteen feet high ! Assuming 

 all this to have been the work of two birds only, we 

 look upon the result as a very astonishing one ; but if 

 the jackdaw is not an exception to the general rule, 

 that the hen bird takes upon herself exclusively the 

 business of nidification, it is quite wonderful. With 



