330 
CORVIM. 
tion of materials likely to attract notice, at the bottom of a low 
thick hedge not far from my own house. The labourers, though 
constantly about the place, had never observed the old birds, and 
the boy told me, that it was only by concealing himself for a con- 
siderable time, on observing the parent bird collecting food, that 
he succeeded in watching her to her retreat” Mr. Hewitson in- 
forms us, that “ magpies, which with us are so suspicious of wrong, 
build their nests under the eaves of the Norwegian cottages.”* 
Although protected themselves, they exhibit no more amiability 
towards a wounded companion there than elsewhere. My late 
friend George Matthews, Esq., observed in a note on these birds, 
that he met with them in great numbers along the coast of Nor- 
way, where they were very tame ; and added, that one which 
he knocked over with a stone, was immediately set upon and 
killed by the others. The late Mr. John Montgomery, of Locust 
Lodge, near Belfast, remarked, that a when angry or alarmed for 
the safety of its young, the magpie is not only very clamorous, 
but pecks the branch on which it rests, violently tearing the bark 
off in its rage.” On the 9th of May, I once saw a grey crow 
attack the nest of a magpie, when the latter, “ single-handed,” 
boldly repulsed and drove the intruder to some distance. The 
crow nevertheless returned to the nest several times, but was 
always beaten off without effecting its evil purpose. Bold as the 
magpie is in defence of its own nest, I have more than once seen it 
beaten away by a pair of missel-thrushes from the vicinity 
of theirs. 
It has often been stated, that if one of a pair of magpies 
having a nest be shot, another mate is soon found ; the period, 
according to Mr. Selby, “ sometimes scarcely exceeding a day;” 
but a gentleman of my acquaintance assures me, that oji his shoot- 
ing one of a pair of these birds in the forenoon, the survivor had 
found another partner before evening. Perhaps the most remark- 
able instance of widowed magpies becoming provided with new 
partners, is that recorded by the celebrated Dr. Jenner, in the 
Philosophical Transactions for 1824 (p. 21). These birds are 
* Eggs, Brit. Birds. Introd. p. xv. 
