before it had descended thirty fathoms, struck his talons into it, and bore it safely away from among his angry assailants.
Nor is this enmity with the corbie confined to the feathered tribes; sundry of our quadrupeds live in constant warfare with the ill-conditioned fowl. If you see a corbie hovering and screaming over a linn or athwart the face of a rock, you may be sure that some animal has attracted his attention. Perhaps a fox is basking on a sunny slope; or the wild cat, cautiously seeking a safe footing whence to spring on some unwary bird that has its nest among the cliffs; or perhaps the supple weasel, sporting about or examining every cranny to find a safe retreat:—I have seen the corbie vexing each of these. The fox will sometimes stretch up his neck and snap at his assailant, when he has made a sudden dive, but the bird eludes the danger, and continues his persecution as before.
The corbie, thus feared by some creatures, hated by others, and most especially detested by the shepherd, on account of certain bloody designs against his fleecy charge, whenever driven by hunger to the attack,—makes his nest in the deepest retirement, in solitude the most inaccessible. He selects a leafless, sapless branch of some stunted tree—a mountain birch or service—jutting out from the face of a perpendicular rock, and hanging over an abyss hundreds of fathoms deep,—the bottom often beset with sharp and pointed rocks. It makes one shudder to think of a living creature being precipitated from the top; yet here the female corbie sits secure, and far more fearless, in far less agitation of spirits, than if her nest were placed in a flowery meadow. The nest is constructed of the decayed stems of heather, skilfully and carefully wattled together with twigs of other trees. A layer of moss is next supplied to fill the interstices, and thus render the mass more compact: this layer is thickest at the bottom, and in places, where the outwork of heather has been made too slight, the inside is partially lined with sprigs of the fly-bent, but principally with wool. Here are deposited the eggs, and here the callow brood are fed and nourished, and kept dry and warm. The eggs are five, six, or seven in number, of a bluish colour, blotched with irregular spots of brown. The order in which they are deposited is scarcely ever seen, for it rarely happens that a human being can approach sufficiently near for the purpose. The young corbies, however, are seldom permitted to escape; for the shepherd, seeking the spot, perilous though it be, smashes the eggs with stones hurled from above, and batters the nest to pieces. He sometimes postpones his revenge until the young ones, full grown and fat, are peeping over the brink of the
