PIE. 313 



of its length and very short ; the fourth or fifth the longest. Tail .very long 

 and graduated. Feet strong ; tarsus longer than the middle toe, to which the 

 outer toe is united as far as its first joint ; claws curved and sharp. 



ALTHOUGH none of our birds is better known than the 

 Pie, yet its singular beauty is almost unsuspected by 

 those who are accustomed to see it only at a distance in 

 the fields, or penned in a cage where its feathers are soiled 

 and its form is disfigured by confinement. That in bye- 

 gone times it was in England a much more familiar bird, is 

 certain from the frequent mention made of it by writers on 

 almost every kind of subject, from the- many omens it fur- 

 nished to popular superstition, and from its being one of 

 those species to which human names were applied, as the 

 existing appellations Magpie, Nanpie and Piannet sufficiently 

 prove*. Its habits have long since earned for it the enmity 

 of the housewife and the gamekeeper, and now should it 

 ever shew its pied plumage near a homestead all its pro- 

 verbial cunning fails to ensure its safety. It consequently 

 leads the life of an outlaw, shunning observation as much as 

 possible, fearing a foe in every inoffensive passenger, and 

 knowing that danger may lurk in every bush. The allusions 

 which its character so readily offered to the poets and the 

 philosophers, the divines and the dramatists of a former 

 period, have lost half their force, and instead of the merry, 

 saucy, semi-domestic intruder upon our curtilages, we have 

 the suspicious thief slinking out of sight even when no 

 harm is intended. The change of demeanour has indeed 

 been thorough. Montagu at the beginning of the present 

 century wrote that " though shy it rarely removes far from 

 the habitation of man ", which was no doubt quite true of 

 the bird here in his time, as it still is true of it in several 

 other countries, but a Pie near a human dwelling, so far as 

 England is concerned, is nowadays hardly to be seen from 

 one year's end to another's. That its attachment to man, as 

 remarked by the same author, was governed by self-interest 

 is only what may be said of many other species ; and, though 



* So also Madge and Magot ; another old name was Rikelot or Kikelot (An- 

 cren Riwle, Ed. Morton, pp. viii. and 88). In France it is Jaqueltcsmd Mart/of. 



