Birds Of Ill Nature

Among those birds which stay at home, especialJy the most domesticated, there is often an exhibition of nnkindness seemingly nnaccountable, saya a writer in The Ooruhill Magazine. The graceful swan, e. g. , is one of the most ungracious in its ways. Not only (in the breeding season) does a male bird regent the intrusión of a strange gentleman, bnt it will spend the day in driving off from its domain any unlucky geese, which rnight be plainly assumed to have no designs upon its domestic arrangements and have, indeed, no desire beyond that for a comfortable wash and swim. It will also pursue even the most innocent of newborn ducklings while they unwittingly rejoice in an early taste of their eommon element. When an onlychild has passed out of the cygnet stage of life and grown tn full physical if not mental maturity, father and mother swans have been known to fall upon and deliberately beat it to death with wing and beak. The gratified parents swam gracefully about the nifire in which they lived, while the great white corpse of their son lay, battered and dead, upon the shore. The followingyear, af ter another had been bom to them aud in infancy carried upoii his mother's back, they began totreat him soroughly that, not being pinioned like them, be wisely flew away and we saw him uo more. Curiously enough, geese which have experienced rudeness from swans in the lusty spring have been known to retalíate in the calmer autumn, when the flerceness of their enemy had become mitigated. I have seen a gander leap upon the back of a once arrogant swan and pound away at it in the full enjoymtint of