THE POULTRY-YARD. 181 



The difference between the jackal and the mungoose is 

 this, that the former is a tramp, who takes in hard times to 

 highway robbery and dacoity, while the latter is a pro- 

 fessional thug ; and I prefer the former. His open assaults, 

 whether by day or by night, are easier to meet than the 

 systematic plots of the cold-blooded cutthroat which 

 murdered two of my rabbits in one afternoon. Happily 

 for us, the horrid lust for blood easily drives it to its own 

 destruction, for, when surprised and compelled to leave its 

 booty, it cannot rest, and if you lie in ambush, with your 

 gun, near the " kill," you will not have to wait half an hour 

 ere it returns to drag the carcass home to its hole under a 

 bush. A third enemy more omnipresent than either the 

 jackal or the mungoose is the pariah kite. Sailing in easy 

 circles, it pretends to be in quest of dead rats or scraps of 

 kitchen refuse, but its eye is on a hen which is busy 

 scratching the ground, with her numerous brood, still in 

 downy infancy, gathered about her. Suddenly it half 

 closes its wings, and, swooping like a whirlwind, passes so 

 near the astonished hen that it blows her almost off her 

 feet and clean out of her wits. She picks herself up, but 

 not her wits, and is away in frantic pursuit of the kite 

 amid the piteous screaming of her forsaken chicks, the 



