216 SPRING. 



cattle, fill their beaks with the loose wool or hair, and 

 flit off as if nothing had been the matter. What may 

 be their object in doing it, it is impossible to say, but 

 they accumulate, as furniture, in their nests, substances 

 that do not appear to be of any use to them. The 

 following is an inventory of goods and chattels that we 

 once saw taken out of a magpie's nest : " a crooked 

 sixpence of which some village fair one had haply been 

 despoiled; a tailor's thimble; two metal buttons; a 

 small plated buckle ; and three or four bits of broken 

 crockery." The greater part of the corvus tribe are, 

 however, very much addicted to thieving ; and not the 

 nest merely, but any hiding place suffices for the con- 

 cealment of the plunder. Provisions are the principal 

 things that they collect ; but as these are found out 

 again and consumed, the quantity hidden does not make 

 the same appearance as that of other things ; and thus 

 the natural wish of the bird to have plenty of food has 

 been confounded with an unnatural propensity to steal 

 what can be of no service to them. A looking glass 

 is a matter of great wonder to magpies. We once saw 

 one placed on the ground where the two in question 

 were hopping about. One of them came up to it, 

 stared at it in apparent wonder, hopped off to the 

 other, and then both returned and spent at least ten 

 minutes in nodding, chattering, and hopping about the 

 glass. 



Though at a distance the colours of the magpie seem 

 only black and white, there is great purity in the white, 

 and a play of colours in the black, which, when seen in 

 a favourable light, is remarkably brilliant, as while the 

 bloom upon them is by turns green, blue, or purple, 



