SUCCESSIVE MATES 299 



How did he make her understand what he wanted ? 

 What arguments did he use ? Did this new Blue- 

 beard "upon compulsion," feel any compunction 

 of conscience in luring one bird after another to 

 marriage, to motherhood, and to death? Were 

 the birds related to him before, and, if so the 

 most likely explanation, I think, of all did each 

 member of this strange stock recognise the para- 

 mount and overmastering obligation of preserving 

 the family at all hazards, an obligation which, as 

 Maeterlinck tells us in his fascinating work The 

 Life of the Bee, is fulfilled in the most self- forgetful 

 nay, self-annihilating spirit by the bees ? Perish 

 the individual, perish any number of individuals, 

 but let the stock survive. We know not ; but 

 again I would remark how inscrutable are the 

 hearts and minds of animals ; of birds above all 

 other animals ; and of the members, as it seems 

 to me, of the great corvine family, above all other 

 birds ! 



The magpie has been known, under special 

 circumstances, to transfer her parental affections 

 from her own young, which she had lost, to those 

 of another bird. A brood of young ravens, which 

 had been taken from their nest, were being brought 

 up in a cart-shed by the carter's boy who had taken 



