300 THE MAGPIE 



them. The young of a magpie, who had happened 

 to build her nest near the shed, were taken and 

 destroyed by the same boy. The bereaved parents 

 hearing " the young ravens which cry/' and which, 

 at that stage of their growth, seem never to be 

 satisfied with food, consoled themselves, it is to 

 be hoped, in some measure, for their own loss, by 

 assiduously supplying the wants of the " ravenous " 

 young birds, till they were removed from the shed 

 by their owner. 



On one occasion, an old magpie's nest gave 

 shelter to a tenant more unlike to herself even than 

 an owl or a starling. It had been noticed that an 

 exceptionally fine fox, found in the same cover, time 

 after time, gave the same splendid cross-country 

 run, making the same points, reaching the same 

 plantation, and, then, always disappearing at the 

 same spot in it, beyond which neither eyesight 

 nor scent could track him. One day, however, he 

 forgot, for the first and last time, the length of his 

 brush. His tail was espied hanging out of the 

 hole in an old magpie's nest to which, when hard 

 put to it, he had managed to climb, and in which 

 he had now, once too often, claimed the right of 

 sanctuary. Poor Reynard was " caught at last." 



What, it may be asked, does the magpie do 



