Countrymen's Nature Lore 141 



He knows these little birds as ranges of snow 

 mountains were known until recent years. Here 

 and there a conspicuous crest was familiar, and 

 was distinguished by a name, among a crowd of 

 nameless neighbours ; but even the named peaks 

 had sometimes two different names, as seen from 

 different points, and were taken to be two distinct 

 summits. Some mountains, again, have had a 

 name but no real existence ; and it is much the same 

 with the gardener's and farm labourer's knowledge 

 of birds. Usually he confuses several species under 

 one name. The marked contrast in the plumage 

 of the male and female birds, or of either with that 

 of the young, was a longstanding and easily com- 

 prehensible source of confusion to men with a good 

 practical knowledge of their habits. East- coast 

 wild fowlers, for example, knew the golden-eye 

 drake as the rattlewings, and the duck and im- 

 mature young as the morillon. The male hen- 

 harrier, in like manner, was the dove hawk, and 

 the hen bird the ringtail. But two species have 

 sometimes been made out of one. In many parts 

 of the country there are believed to be two distinct 

 kinds of magpies ; the tree magpie is distinguished 

 from the bush magpie by the greater length of its 

 tail, as well as by its choice of trees for a nesting 

 place. Magpies will build their great roofed nest 

 at almost any height above the ground, according 

 to the cover available, either in a dwarf thorn- 

 bush on the wind-beaten Cornish moors or at the 

 top of a tall beech or elm in woods or pastures. 

 There seems no evidence of any difference of size 



