society, as trees are common everywhere; but what motive they can have in view in lingering thus for a few autumnal mornings and counselling with each other around their abandoned and now useless nests, which before the return of spring are generally beaten from the trees, is by no means manifest to us. The sense of smelling seems often to supply in animals the want of faculties they are not gifted with; and it is this power which directs them to their food with greater certainty, than the discernment of man could do. That we have every faculty given us necessary for the condition in which we are placed, is manifest; yet the mechanical talents and intuition of the insect, the powers that birds and beasts possess, and the superior acuteness of some of their senses, of which, perhaps, we have little conception, makes it evident that all created things were equally the objects of their Maker’s benevolence and care; the worm that creepeth, and the beast that perisheth, deserve our consideration, and claim from human reason mercy and compassion. The tall tangled hedge-row, the fir grove, or the old, well-wooded inclosure, constitutes the delight of the magpie (corvus pica), as there alone its large and dark nest has any chance of escaping observation. We here annually deprive it of these asylums, and it leaves us; but it does not seem to be a bird that increases much anywhere. As it generally lays eight or ten eggs, and is a very wary and cunning creature, avoiding all appearance of danger, it might be supposed that it would yearly become more numerous. Upon particular occasions we see a few of them collect; but the general spread is diminished, and as population advances, the few that escape will retire from the haunts and persecutions of man. These birds will occasionally plunder the nests of some few others; and we find in early spring the eggs of our out-laying domestic fowls frequently dropped about, robbed of their contents. That the pie is a party concerned in these thefts, we cannot deny, but to the superior audacity of the crow we attribute our principal injury. However the magpie may feed on the eggs of others, it is particularly careful to guard its own nest from similar injuries by covering it with an impenetrable canopy of thorns, and is our only bird that uses such a precaution, securing it from all common depredation, though not from the hand of the bird-nesting boy. When a hatch is effected, the number of young demand a larger quantity of food than is easily obtained, and whole broods of our ducklings, whenever they stray from the yard, are conveyed to the nest. But still the “magot” is not an unuseful bird, as it frees our pastures of incredible numbers of grubs and slugs, which lodge themselves under the crusts formed by the dung of cattle. These the birds with their strong beaks turn over, and catch the lurking animals beneath, and then break them to search for more; by which means,