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from below, so unfinished, that a legend has been 

 invented to account for its incongruities and 

 shortcomings so clever a bird, so unsatisfactory 

 a nest! When the world was still young, so 

 runs the story, the magpie, though she was sharp 

 enough too sharp, perhaps, in other things 

 found herself, I suppose by way of compensation, 

 quite unable to construct her own nest, and called 

 in other birds to help her. " Place this stick thus," 

 said the blackbird. "Ah," said the magpie, "I 

 knew that afore." Other birds followed with other 

 suggestions, and to all of them she made the same 

 reply. Their patience was, at last, exhausted by her 

 conceit, and they left her in a body, saying with 

 one consent, " Well, Mistress Mag, as you seem to 

 know all about it, you may e'en finish the nest 

 yourself" ; and so, with its dome unfinished and 

 unable to keep out wind and rain, it has, in 

 consequence, remained to this very day. 



No one who imagined or propagated this 

 legend can ever have climbed to a magpie's nest, 

 still less faced the difficulty of getting round it 

 or above it, on its lofty perch, of finding the small 

 hole in its side, or of forcing his hand through it, 

 often at the cost of much blood, and so reaching 

 the grey-green eggs, freckled all over with brown, 



