BIRD NESTING. 
83 
for any indication of the site of the nest. Failing to find any, 
I push niy stick into the ground to mark the spot. I work my 
way slowly towards the heap of dead burdocks a few feet ahead. 
Starting from the stick again, I go to the right with no success; 
then to the left, till at last, after half an hour’s diligent search, I 
see the bright eye of the brave little hen bird, watching me from 
amid the rank grass, pushing itself through the decaying leaves 
of last year. I stretch out my hand towards her, and with a 
shrill cry of alarm she flies off, and the nest 'and eggs are at my 
mercy. 
How pretty they are ! To take the nest from its surround- 
ings would be to spoil it. Composed principally of grass, and 
bent over at the top to form a kind of roof, lined with a few dead 
leaves and a little horsehair — which latter fact helps to distin- 
guish it from the nest of its near relative, the willow warbler, 
which is generally lined with feathers — five little plump eggs, 
thickly spotted with small dark purple spots, and here we have 
all that those tiny birds have travelled from Africa to accomplish. 
Long and tiring must the journey have been, but borne up 
by hope they struggled bravely on, over sea and land, back to 
this quiet wood, and he must be heartless indeed who would 
rob them of their treasures. I take one of the eggs carefully 
in my fingers and examine it. How delicate the shell ! How 
beautiful the markings ! And as I gently replace it in the nest, 
I feel how infinitely better it is that it should be allowed to give 
to the world another sweet singer, than to be hidden away in the 
dark recesses of a cabinet. 
F. W. Ashley. 
INDIAN PARIAH DOGS. 
is one of the commonplaces of observation that the 
A i instinct in children is strong to endow with human 
qualities the objects with which they come in contact. 
Thus )^our little girl gravely puts her sawdust doll to 
sleep, and your little boy looks upon the dog with whom he 
romps as more or less a human playfellow. In the same way 
he regards the dogs of neighbours as potential friends, whom 
only an opportunity is necessary to convert into actual ones. 
But in India the pariah or mongrel cur is always considered by 
the boy to be beyond the pale of fellowship. He is the outcast 
of his species, against whom every honest dog may raise a bark, 
every boy a hand ; and Ave are not sure that when the bo}^ 
attains to Avhat are called years of discretion, his estimate of the 
pariah alters, for from a steady course of experience the idea of 
the mongrel gets to be associated with vagrancy and petty 
larceny. He does not even possess the merit of any great vice. 
