There is a popular legend that once on a time a poor girl was arrested in Florence for having stolen a chain, a bracelet, or some such article of jewellery of immense value. She was thrown into prison, but though there was collateral or indirect evidence to prove her guilt, the stolen article could not be found. Gossip and rumour constituted ample grounds for indictment and trial, and torture did the rest in the pious times when it was generally taught and believed that Providence would always rescue the innocent, and that everybody who came to grief on the gallows had deserved it for something or other at some time, and that it was all right. So the girl was executed, and almost forgotten. When a long time after, some workman or other was sent up to the top of the column of the Piazza Trinità, and there found that a jackdaw or magpie had built a nest in the balance or scales held by Justice, and in it was the missing jewel. This is an Italian form of “The Maid and the Magpie,” known the world over from ancient times. The scales suggest a droll German story. There was in front of a certain palace or town-hall, where all criminals were tried, a statue of Justice holding a pair of scales, and these were not cast solid, but were a _bonâ fide_ pair of balances. And certain low thieves having been arrested with booty—whatever it was—it was discovered that they had divided it among themselves very accurately, even to the ounce. At which the magistrate greatly marvelling, asked them how they could have done it so well, since it had appeared that they had not been in any house between the period of the theft and their arrest. Whereupon one replied: “Very easily, your Honour, for, to be honourable, honest, and just as possible, we weighed the goods in the scales of Justice itself, here on the front of the _Rath-haus_.” It is for every reason more probable that the bird which stole the jewel of the column was a jackdaw than a magpie, and it is certainly fitter that it should have been thus in Florence. “It is well known,” says Oken in his “Natural History” (7 B. Part I. 347), “that the jackdaw steals glittering objects, and carries them to its nest.” Hence the ancient legend of Arne, who so greatly loved gold, that she sold her native isle Siphnos to Minos, and was for that turned by the gods into a daw (Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” vii. 466). As a mischief-making, thieving, and chattering bird of black colour, the jackdaw was naturally considered evil, and witches, or their imps, often assumed its form. In fact, the only really good or pious bird of the kind on record known to me, is the jackdaw of Rheims sung by Ingoldsby Barham. According to Kornmannus, the column was placed where it now stands, because Cosimo was in the Piazza Trinità when he heard the news of the surrender of Siena. * * * * * After I had written the foregoing legend, I found the following: