NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 145 



proportion to the helplessness of her brood ; and will fly in 

 the face of a dog or a sow in defence of those chickens? 

 which in a few weeks she will drive before her with 

 relentless cruelty. 



This affection sublimes the passions, quickens the inven- 

 tion, and sharpens the sagacity of the brute creation. Thus 

 a hen, just become a mother, is no longer that placid bird 

 she used to be, but with feathers standing on end, wings 

 hovering, and clocking note, she runs about like one 

 possessed. Dams will throw themselves in the way of the 

 greatest danger in order to avert it from their progeny. 

 Thus a partridge will tumble along before a sportsman in 

 order to draw away the dogs from her helpless covey. In 

 the time of nidification the most feeble birds will assault 

 the most rapacious. All the hirundines of a village are up 

 in arms at the sight of a hawk, whom they will persecute 

 till he leaves that district. A very exact observer has 

 often remarked that a pair of ravens nesting in the rock of 

 Gibraltar would suffer no vulture or eagle to rest near their 

 station, but would drive them from the hill with an 

 amazing fury ; even the blue thrush at the season of 

 breeding would dart out from the clefts of the rocks to 

 chase away the kestril, or the sparrow-hawk. If you stand 

 near the nest of a bird that has young, she will not be 

 induced to betray them by an inadvertent fondness, but 

 will wait about at a distance with meat in her mouth for 

 an hour together. 



Should I farther corroborate what I have advanced 

 above by some anecdotes which I probably may have 

 mentioned before in conversation, yet you will, I trust, 

 pardon the repetition for the sake of the illustration. 



The fly-catcher of the Zoology (the Stoparola of Ray), 

 builds every year in the vines that grow on the walls of my 



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