of Selborne 131 



invention, and sharpens the sagacity of the brute creation. 

 Thus an hen, just become a motlicr, is no longer that 

 placid bird she used to be, but with feathers standing on 

 end, wings hovering, and clocking note, she runs about 

 like one possessed. Dams will throw themselves in the 

 way of the greatest danger in order to avert it from their 

 progeny. Thus a partridge will tumble along before a 

 sportsman in order to draw away the dogs from her help- 

 less covey. In the time of nidification the most feeble 

 birds will assault the most rapacious. All the /u'rundiftes 

 of a village are up in arms at the sight of an hawk, whom 

 they will persecute till he leaves that district. A very 

 exact observer has often remarked that a pair of ravens 

 nesting in the rock of Gibraltar would suffer no vulture or 

 eagle to rest near their station, but would drive them from 

 the hill with an amazing fury : even the blue thrush at the 

 season of breeding would dart out from the clefts of the 

 rocks to chase away the kestril, or the sparrow-hawk. If 

 you stand near the nest of a bird that has young, she will 

 not be induced to betray them by an inadvertent fond- 

 ness, but will wait about at a distance with meat in her 

 mouth for an hour together. 



Should I farther corroborate what I have advanced 

 above by some anecdotes which I probably may have 

 mentioned before in conversation, yet you will, I trust, 

 pardon the repetition for the sake of the illustration. 



The flycatcher of the Zoology (the sfoparola of Ray), 

 builds every year in the vines that grow on the walls of my 

 house. A pair of these little birds had one year inadver- 

 tently placed their nest on a naked bough, perhaps in a 

 shady time, not being aware of the inconvenience that 

 followed. But an hot sunny season coming on before 

 the brood was half fledged, the reflection of the wall 

 became insupportable, and must inevitably have destroyed 

 the tender young, had not affection suggested an expedi- 

 ent, and prompted the parent-birds to hover over the 

 nest all the hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and 

 mouths gaping for breath, they screened off the heat from 

 their suffering offspring. 



A farther insiance I once saw of notable sagacity in a. 



