Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

Gilbert White tells a most dramatic story of a neighbor who had lost most of his chickens by a sparrow-hawk that came gliding down between a faggot pile and the end of his house, to the place where his coop stood. The owner, vexed to see his flock diminishing hung a net between the pile and the house, into which the bird dashed and was entangled. The gentleman’s resentment suggested a fit retaliation; he therefore clipped the hawk’s wings, cut off his talons, and fixing a cork on his bill, threw him down among the brood-hens. “Imagination,” says Mr. White, “can not paint the scene that ensued; the expressions that fear, rage and revenge inspired were new, or at least such as had been unnoticed before; the exasperated matrons upbraided, they execrated, they insulted, they trampled. In a word, they never desisted from buffeting their adversary till they had torn him in a hundred pieces.”-Scribner for February.