294 THE CARRION CROW. 



of eggs be taken from a duck, she will generally lay a second time, 

 and that will be at a period when the water abounds with weeds, 

 amongst which the young brood can skulk, and screen itself from the 

 watchful eye of an enemy. 



From what I have written, the reader may be able to form a pretty 

 correct idea of the habits of the carrion crow ; and he will perceive 

 that, for nearly ten months of the year, this bird, far from being con- 

 sidered an enemy, ought to be pronounced the friend of man. 



Let us now examine if the attacks of this bird on domestic poultry 

 cannot be easily counteracted, and whether its assiduous attention 

 to the nests of pheasants and of partridges is of so alarming and so 

 important a nature as to call for its utter extermination from the land. 

 For my own part, I acknowledge that I should lament his final 

 absence from our meadows and our woods. His loud and varied 

 notes at early dawn, and again at latest eve, are extremely grateful 

 to me ; and many an hour of delight do I experience when, having 

 mounted up to the top of a favourite aged oak which grows on the 

 border of a swamp, I see him chasing the heron and the windhover 

 through the liquid void, till they are lost in the distance. Then, 

 again, how eager is his pursuit ! how loud his croaking ! how in- 

 veterate his hostility ! when he has espied a fox stealing away from 

 the hounds, under the covert of some friendly hedge. His compact 

 and well-built figure, too, and the fine jet black of his plumage, are, 

 in my eye, beautifully ornamental to the surrounding sylvan scenery. 



A very small share of precaution on the part of the henwife would 

 effectually preserve her chickens and her ducklings from the dreaded 

 grasp of the carrion crow. Let her but attend to the suggestion of 

 setting her early ducks' eggs under a hen," and let her keep that hen 

 from rambling, and she will find her best hopes realised. As for the 

 game, I verily believe that, in most cases, the main cause of the 

 destruction of its eggs may be brought home to the gamekeeper 

 himself. This unrelenting butcher of our finest and rarest British 

 birds goes, forsooth, and makes a boast to his master that he has a 

 matter of five hen pheasants hatching in such a wood, and as many 

 partridges in the adjacent meadows. This man probably never 

 reflects that, in his rambles to find the nests of these birds, he has 

 made a track, which will often be followed up by the cat, the fox, 



