300 , IXSECTIVORJ3. 



barren, and no blight or blast could invade ; but where 

 plenty would attend on every labour, and the beauty of the 

 scene would bloom full and fair, mingling confidence with 

 hope that the colony which you had founded would continue, 

 for generations unnumbered, to enjoy the bounty and bless the 

 bestower. If the land were all before you where to choose, 

 and you were as much the unsophisticated child of nature as 

 the bird, the probability is that you would act thus, and that 

 is just what he does. Beneath that heap of stones there is a 

 little nest, formed of moss and grass, and carefully lined with 

 hair, feathers, or wool, with five or six eggs of a delicate 

 bluish-white, and there is a mate of whom and her promised 

 brood the bird is as fond, and for them he has as much for- 

 saken the society of other birds, as the most exemplary of 

 the human race could possibly do. He watches early and 

 late, and endeavours to divert any one that passes from the 

 retreat of his charge. He renders it unnecessary for the 

 dam to leave the eggs when they might be injured by the 

 cold and damp, for he feeds her morning and evening while 

 the air is cold ; but in order that she may not suffer by the 

 confinement, he takes her place a short time during the 

 warmth of the day, while she exercises her feet and wings 

 a little, and picks a snail fresh from the all-supplying earth. 



Yet, for these assiduities to his brood, the wheat-ear has 

 been made, in the northern parts of Britain, and in places 

 farther to the north, the victim of superstition. Old and 

 young continue to kill and persecute the birds, and to 

 destroy their eggs, considering the service as one of more 

 than ordinary merit. Nor, though the warfare on them 

 there be a little more rational, do they fare better in the 

 southern parts of the country. When they collect in num- 

 bers on the southern downs, which they do about the middle 

 of July, they are caught in horse-hair nooses in vast numbers, 

 which are set between two turfs turned against each other. 



