at play; while upon the
bushes over their heads were suspended an immense number of the
beautiful nests of the sagacious 'baya' bird, or Indian yellow-
hammer,[2] all within reach of a grown-up boy, and one so near the
road that a grown-up man might actually look into it as he passed
along, and could hardly help shaking it. It cannot fail to strike a
European as singular to see so many birds' nests, situated close to a
village, remain unmolested within reach of so many boisterous
children, with their little proprietors and families fluttering and
chirping among them with as great a feeling of security and gaiety of
heart as the children themselves enjoy.

In any part of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an
hour within reach of such a population; for the baya bird has no
peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and
robin-redbreast in England. No boy in India has the slightest wish to
molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and
they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it. With us it is
different--to discover birds' nests is one of the first modes in
which a boy exercises his powers, and displays his love of art. Upon
his skill in finding them he is willing to rest his first claim to
superior sagacity and enterprise. His trophies are his string of
eggs; and the eggs most prized among them are those of the nests that
are discovered with most difficulty, and attained with most danger.
The same feeling of desire to display their skill and enterprise in
search after birds' nests in early life renders the youth of England
the enemy almost of the whole animal creation throughout their after
career. The boy prides himself on his dexterity in throwing a stone
or a stick; and he practises on almost every animal that comes in his
way, till he never sees one without the desire to knock it down, or
at least to hit it; and, if it is lawful to do so, he feels it to be
a most serious misfortune not to have a stone within his reach at the
time. As he grows up, he prides himself upon his dexterity in
shooting, and he never sees a member of the feathered tribe within
shot, without a desire to shoot it, or without regretting that he has
not a gun in his hand to shoot it. That he is not entirely destitute
of sympathy, however, with the animals he maims for his amusement is
sufficiently manifest from his anxiety to put them out of pain the
moment he gets them.

A friend of m