Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/145

ragged and soiled and pulled askew on his neck.

You look at him for long with an indefinite conviction that something is wanting in his equipment. A red beak would be an improvement, certainly, and to secure it a cross with the chough might be tried; but what you really miss in Stiggins is a black bottle and a bad umbrella.

The raven was once white, Ovid ells us, but Apollo turned him black for tale-bearing. The rook and the crow must have told tales, too, unless Apollo condemned the lot at once, from uncertainty as to the actual culprit. The magpie and the chaplain crow are only partly black—offence not specified. Perhaps they told white lies. Here at the Zoo are two perfectly white jackdaws, and I have spent some time in an effort to discover for what conspicuously virtuous exploit they have been so distinguished. I can find nothing in their histories