THE MAGPIE AND THE JAY 247 



through which it drinks its contents. Very often 

 the eggs are not sucked in the nest but carried a 

 little way off ; however, there are generally enough 

 shells left in the nest to betray the identity of 

 the culprit. This little weakness on the part 

 of the magpie has earned it the undying 

 hatred of game-preservers and keepers, whose 

 war against it, waged with gun and trap, has 

 certainly more justification than has their 

 destruction of some other birds and beasts ; yet 

 personally I never see a row of magpies swing- 

 ing from the keeper's gibbet without a pang 

 of regret, for they are representative of that 

 everlasting strife between man and wild life 

 in which so many species have been worsted, 

 being reduced to exceeding rarity, or even ex- 

 terminated. 



The magpie, at any rate, is not at present in 

 any danger of extermination, for it is an elastic 

 species, and when the pressure is removed by 

 ever so little its numbers soon increase. During 

 the war it increased most markedly, as did the 

 jay. Keepers left their work to fight in France 

 or Flanders, to help on the land or in munition 

 factories, shooting and game-preserving came 

 to a standstill, and both the magpie and jay 

 profited by the opportunity and increased accord- 

 ingly. The magpie especially multiplied sur- 

 prisingly fast, appearing in numbers all over 

 the country, its cheery chuckling chatter being 

 heard again in woods from which for years it 

 had been exiled. The jay, too, flourished and 



