OUR JACKDAW.
MO THE EDITOR Or Tilt "sreccurote."1
send to you herewith a true account of a jackdaw in case you may think it worth reproducing in your paper. Poor Jack ' ! He was a good sort. We called him Jack Dutton,' after a cottage friend who lived on the borders of a forest and who brought him up for us from a baby. 'Jack' made himself quite at home, went in and out of the cottage at his own sweet will, played with the children, and, of course, grew mischievous. At night he took up his quarters in a corner inside. When he came to us he wanted the same privileges; he preferred to come into the house, and when be got inside now and then would pick up unconsidered trifles in the way of teaspoons and such like things. I made him a large aviary in a corner of the garden, with comfortable dark corners as retreats, where he was quite the lord of all he surveyed. In the daytime a little trap-door was always open, but he seldom came out uncalled, and when he did he never seemed quite happy until he got back into his own domain. When cats called round he uttered a particularly raucous cry that was seldom heard at other times ; but cats did not trouble him much ; be had a very fine beak. He would follow my wife across the lawn to the summer-house and mount the back of her chair, where he would amuse himself by pulling out her comb and hairpins, always working on the line of least resistance; he would play with her ear, and tousle her hair, and do all sorts of funny things. The outer kitchen door opened up a few steps into the garden, and food was often placed in a saucer at the top of the steps. We did not understand why the saucers were so often broken, until one day when in the garden, near by, my wife heard a scraping noise, and looking round saw Master 'Jack' pushing the empty saucer along the top step. When close to the edge the rascal gave one final shove and then popped his bead quickly over to see the saucer break three feet below. On another occasion, when gardening, my wife placed her white starched cuffs on a pedestal and forgot them. An hour afterwards they were found on the kitchen floor. 'Jack' had espied them on the pedestal, had carried them to the top of the steps, and dropped them over to see them break ! We bad a pet dog of whom 'Jack' did not seem to take much notice ; but one afternoon in the summer-house, when my wife was having a rough-and-tumble bit of fun with the dog, ' Jack ' uttered his peculiar raucous cry and attacked my wife vigorously for what he thought was her bad treatment of the dog. This was repeated afterwards as an experiment with the same result.
When Jack' was about eighteen months old we were sur- prised to hear him trying to speak English to us. This developed into the words "Come on!" as clearly as we spoke them ourselves. These words had often been used to him and to the little dog in his hearing. Then we tried to teach more, but never got beyond the exclamation "Hello!" uttered in the softest of tones. It was exceedingly comical sometimes, when pretending to have a pitched battle with him in the garden, to see him dodge behind a stone and out again, saying " Hello !" in the quaintest of voices. By giving a certain whistle I could always elicit from him a vigorous "Come on!" and when carrying him on his back in my hand with his feet in the air he would sometimes challenge me to "Come on!" just as if he were the top dog, and I were not. The rascal knew be was funny, and gloried in it. Thinking be might like a mate, I bought another jackdaw, but they never even became friends. Jack Dutton' never cared a brass farthing about his mate. He preferred me by a long way ; and if I were working near him would always sidle up to me to see what I was doing, trying to take the small tools from me as if he wanted to give a helping hand. Three months ago he developed asthma, and gradually lost his vigour, but retained his quaintness. A few mornings ago I found him very poorly and weak. We did our best for him, but the next day we mourned the loss of a companion and a
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