THE " KUSSET-PATED CHOUGH " OF SHAKESPEARE. 339 



lightness and durability, I well remember about that time ordering, 

 from a tailor at Chichester, a shooting coat of this material, which 

 was only discarded when it became too small for the wearer. 

 Modern tweed suits have since put this stuff out of fashion, but 

 it must have found favour with sportsmen for many years, since 

 it was in vogue in Byron's day : — 



" The corn is cut, the manor full of game ; 

 The pointer ranges, and the sportsman beats 

 In russet jacket." 



Don Juan, Canto xii. 



But in regard to the sense of colour in which russet 

 has been used, enough has here been adduced by way of illus- 

 tration to show that, while it was sometimes used to denote 

 some reddish shade of brown, as the colour of a hare, dead 

 fern, heather, or withered grass, it was often employed to mean 

 gray. Now as everyone knows, or should know, the colour 

 on the pate of a Jackdaw in the breeding season is gray ; not 

 unlike that of a new smock-frock as worn by the labourers of 

 Hampshire whom Gilbert White has pictured in their " russet- 

 frock"; while the head of the red-legged Chough is wholly 

 black. 



Venerable gray-headed councillors might be not inaptly 

 termed " chough-headed," and Thomas Nash, a contemporary 

 of Shakespeare, in his ' Apologie of Pierce Pennilesse ' (1592), 

 actually has the expression " chuff-headed burghomasters." 



When we consider, then, that the name " Chough," which is 

 onomatopoeic, was formerly applied to the Jackdaw ; that Shake- 

 speare has frequently written "pate" for "head," but never 

 "patted" for "footed," and that he is by no means singular in 

 his use of the word "russet" for "gray," there appears to be 

 sufficient justification for concluding that his " russet-pated 

 Chough" is not the red-legged Cornish bird, but our old friend 

 the gray-headed Jackdaw. 



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