MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



talons, hard bristles on the beak, the keen 

 eye of the hunter : it is the kind of 

 similarity that must always exist among 

 animals whose mode of life is closely similar. 

 We know nowadays that structure depends 

 upon habit, not habit upon structure. If 

 you take to earning your living by rapine, 

 you will acquire certain traits of strength 

 and keenness inevitable in predatory forms ; 

 and that is why the shrikes, which are 

 related by descent to the wrens and thrushes, 

 have grown to resemble in external confor- 

 mation the sparrowhawks and kestrels. 



On the rare occasions when you do catch 

 sight of a shrike, he is usually seated, half 

 in ambush, on some perch in a tall hawthorn, 

 or even openly on the telegraph-wires that 

 cross a patch of likely hunting country. 

 There he peers about and watches with 

 his keen hazel eyes till mouse, frog, or lizard, 

 bee, beetle, or dragon-fly, stirs in the meadow 

 beneath him. Then, swift as thought, he 

 swoops down upon his quarry from his 

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