YELLOW-BILLED MAGPIES 



MY two unsuccessful jaunts at Paso Robles 

 in search of yellow-billed magpies only 

 put a keener edge upon my appetite. By this 

 time, indeed, to use an expressive colloquialism, 

 common when I was younger, I had magpies on 

 the brain. If such birds were to be seen, at any 

 reasonable price, I wished to see them. I had 

 heard, before leaving Massachusetts, that this 

 might possibly be accomplished in the vicinity of 

 Monterey; but a famous California ornithologist, 

 to whom I am indebted for many favors, had done 

 his best to make an end of all such expectations. 

 There zvere no magpies about Monterey, he said, 

 in a tone of positiveness. He had been there, and 

 he knew. Happily, however, there is always the 

 possibility of error in assertions of this kind, no 

 matter who makes them, and I still cherished 

 an unspoken hope that my original information, 

 which likewise had seemed to come from excellent 

 authority, might turn out to be correct. It is no 

 very serious offense, no sacrilege, surely, to ques- 

 tion even a scientific man's knowledge, so long as it 

 is of a negative sort, and so long, especially, as he 

 is not admitted into the secret of our skepticism. 



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