232 Birds, 



or glazed part of the window, although when the sash was down, the 

 lower panes were his favourites. Please to bear this in mind, whilst 

 we consider what prompted the bird to this curious daily performance. 

 At first I thought there must be some insect food close to the window, 

 which invited him. There was none visible, but might there not be 

 some invisible to human eyes? The windows having the rising beams 

 of the sun upon them, rather favoured this supposition, and for a week 

 or two 1 was content to watch the bird's manoeuvres, and fancied that 

 he was solving (or dis-solving ?) a thousand problems each minute of 

 Dalton's ^^ atomic theory." I put some crumbs of wheaten bread 

 upon the window-sill, and as he passed these unheeded by, still jump- 

 ing and pecking at the window, it must be even as I had supposed. 

 But by and bye came frost, and then severe frost throughout the night 

 and morning. Still my window-peeper came, and kept to his mora- 

 ing toil with undeviating constancy, although the blinds were drawn 

 up before the sun had arisen, and a temperature now prevailed in 

 which it was manifestly impossible that any insects could be abroad. 

 I was confined to my room about four or five days in December, and 

 you may conceive how doubly welcome were the constant tappings of 

 my morning visitor during this confinement. I had leisure to watch 

 him more minutely, and now it occurred to me that the bird saw his 

 own image in the window, which peradventure he took for a lost mate^ 

 and this was the real object of his visits. Thus the first impression 

 connected with him wa s /e«r, the second, love, and the last, pity. 

 We deeply sympathized with him in his supposed bereavement ; and 

 it seemed hard to tell whether he deserved more pity for the loss of 

 his companion, or for the delusion practised upon him by the mirror- 

 ed window, where only a false image of his lost mate met his advances. 

 It seemed a sad want of discrimination in the bird ; but I could not 

 help reflecting that man — reasoning man — makes many attempts al- 

 most as visionary and futile in the pursuit of his loved objects. Our 

 mutual friend, Mr. P , whom we call the Gilbert White of the dis- 

 trict, fi'om his accurate observance of living creatures, came to see me 

 at this time, and was, of course, hitroduced to the wagtail. He in- 

 clined at once to the supposition that the bird was a disconsolate wi- 

 dower, and mistook his own " mould of form " for the person of his 

 lost mate. I must not forget to say that the bird never came till the 

 blinds were drawn up, but he was so immediately at the window after 

 the first blind was raised, that he must have been watching within 

 sight of the windows, and within a very short distance ; and this not 

 casually, but constantly every morning ! Is not this a curious pait 



