Jackdaws are easily tamed, and may with little difficulty be taught to pronounce several words. They conceal such parts of their food as they cannot eat, and often, along with it, small pieces of money or toys, frequently occasioning, for the moment, suspicions of theft in persons who are innocent. In Switzerland there is found a variety of the Jackdaw, which has a white ring round its neck. In Norway, and other cold countries, they have been seen entirely white. In a state of nature, jackdaws and rooks frequently feed together, and the Jackdaws come to meet the rooks in the morning, and also accompany them for some distance on their retreat at night. [Illustration: THE MAGPIE. (_Pica caudata._)] “From bough to bough the restless Magpie roves, And chatters as he flies.” GISBORNE. THIS bird resembles the daw, except in the whiteness of the breast and wings, and the length of the tail. The black of the feathers is accompanied with a changing gloss of green and purple. It is a very loquacious creature, and can be taught to imitate the human voice as well as any of the feathered creation. Plutarch relates a singular story of a Magpie belonging to a barber at Rome, which could imitate, to a wonderful extent, almost every noise that it heard. Some trumpets happened one day to be sounded before the shop; and for a day or two afterwards the Magpie was quite mute, and seemed pensive and melancholy. This surprised all who knew it; and they supposed the sound of the trumpets had so stunned the bird as to deprive it at the same time of voice and hearing. This, however, was not the case; for, says the writer, the bird had been all the time occupied in profound meditation, and was studying how to imitate the sound of the trumpets; accordingly, in the first attempt, it perfectly imitated all their repetitions, stops, and changes. This new lesson, however, made it entirely forget everything that it had learned before.