III. THE DABCHICKS. 95 



or littery places, of which the hidden treasures 

 are only to be discovered in that manner, 

 s'eems to i7ie no supremely interesting custom 

 of the animal's life, but only a manner of its 

 household, or threshold, economy. But that 

 the tribe, on the whole, is unambitiously 

 domestic, and never predatory; that they fly 

 little and low, eat much of what they can 

 pick up without trouble — and are themselves 

 always excellent eating ; — yet so exemplary 

 in their own domestic cares and courtesies 

 that one is ashamed to eat them except in 

 eggs ; — that their plumage is for the most 

 part warm brown, delicately and even be- 

 witchingly spotty ;— and that, in the goodliest 

 species, the spots become variegated, and 

 inlaid as in a Byzantine pavement, deepening 

 to imperial purple and azure, and lightening 

 into lustre of innumerable eyes; — all this, I 

 hold, very clearly and positively, should be 

 explained to children as a part of science, 

 quite as exact, and infinitely more gracious, 

 than that which reckons up the whole tribe 

 of loving and luminous creatures under the 

 feebly descriptive term of 'Scratchers.' 



I v/ill venture therefore to recommend my 



