310 THE MAGPIE 



which lies beyond, and has given them a good 

 night's fishing, waiting patiently for the approach of 

 evening, and with Duddle plantation, in which so 

 many of them have been, and, I hope, so many 

 more of them will be, safely reared, full in their sight. 

 You may see the mallard wheeling in narrower and 

 ever narrower, and lower and ever lower circles, as 

 he nears the bed of heather, in which his mate is 

 sitting on her eggs ; and, best of all, if you are very 

 lucky, once perhaps in a month, you may hear, far 

 overhead, the sepulchral croak of a pair of ravens 

 who are on a passing visit from the sea-cliffs to 

 Millicent Clump, or Raven Tarn, where they, and, 

 perhaps, the long line of their ancestors, have been 

 born and bred. 



" Among the Romans not a bird 

 Without a prophecy was heard ; 

 Fortunes of empires often hung 

 On the magician magpie's tongue." 



And no sketch of the magpie would be complete if 

 it failed to say something of the folk-lore, of the 

 legends, the superstitions, and the attributes, self- 

 contradictory though they often are, which have 

 attached themselves to the bird, at different times 

 and in different countries. Her geographical range 



