210 
NATURAL HISTORY 
A farmer^ near WeyMll, fallows his land with two teams 
of asses ; one of which works till noon, and the other in the 
afternoon. When these animals have done their work, 
they are penned all night, like sheep, on the fallow. In the 
winter they are confined and foddered in a yard, and make 
plenty of dung. 
Linnaeus says, that hawks paciscuntur inducias cum 
avihus, quamdiu cuculus cuculat:" but it appears to me 
that, during that period, many little birds are taken and 
destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen by their feathers 
left in lanes and under hedges. 
The missel-thrish^ is, while breeding, fierce and pugna- 
MISSEL-THRUSH. 
cious, driving such birds as approach its nest, with great 
fury, to a distance. The Welsh call it pen y llwyn, the 
head or master of the coppice. He suffers no magpie, jay, 
or blackbird, to enter the garden where he haunts ; and is, 
for the time, a good guard to the new sown legumens. In 
general he is very successful in the defence of his family : 
but once I observed in my garden, that several magpies 
^ As to the proper mode of spelling the name of this bird, see Pro- 
fessor Newton's edition of Yarrell's " History of Brititih Birds," vol. i. 
p. 260, note.— Ed. 
