332 THE MAGPIE 



Andrew of the woods, this pretty, restless, Flibberti- 

 gibbet, this " magician" magpie, with her marked 

 character and her varied associations, the favourite 

 of the whole of the Scandinavian races, tolerated or 

 encouraged even by the bird-exterminating French, 

 should, in obedience to the insatiable demands of 

 the annual battue, be banished from so many large 

 and picturesque tracts of "merrye" England, that 

 she should wear a hunted look, and should owe her 

 bare existence, not to the love of beauty and of 

 nature one of God's best and highest gifts to man 

 but only to her own sagacity and her suspicious- 

 ness, not without good reason, of those who were 

 once, who ought to be still, and who, one would 

 fain hope, may, one day, again be, her best friends. 



