THE DAW SENTIMENT 363 



existed within a mile or two of the preserves, and 

 one day the keeper was called away in a hurry and 

 left the coops unattended for the best part of a day ; 

 it was the biggest mistake he had ever made and the 

 chief disaster of his life. On his return he found that 

 the daws had been before him and that all his precious 

 chicks had been carried off. For several hours of 

 that day there was a steady coming and going of 

 birds between the cliffs and the coops, every daw 

 going back with a chick in his beak for his hungry 

 young in the nest. 



Yet my informant, this ancient and singularly 

 intelligent old man, a gamekeeper all his life, who 

 knows his jackdaw, could not tell me why game- 

 keepers no longer persecute so injurious a bird ! 

 He will not allow a sparrow-hawk to exist in his 

 woods, yet all he could say when I repeated my 

 question was, " No keeper ever thinks of hurting 

 a jack now, but I can't say why." 



The reason of it I fancy is plain enough ; it is 

 simply the sentiment I have spoken of. In a small 

 way it has always existed in certain places, in towns, 

 where the jackdaw is associated in our minds with 

 cathedrals and church towers — ^where he is the 

 " ecclesiastical daw " ; but the modern wider 

 toleration is due to the character, the personality, 

 of the bird itself, which is more or less like that of 

 all the members of the corvine family, with the 



