'Of course I have; but were you not all trying to kill him?' replied
the poor man. He thought their only object had been to kill the
jackal, as they would have killed a serpent, merely because he was a
mischievous and noisy beast.
The European traveller in India is often in doubt whether the
peacocks, partridges, and ducks, which he finds round populous
villages, are tame or wild, till he asks some of the villagers
themselves, so assured of safety do these creatures become, and so
willing to take advantage of it for the food they find in the
suburbs. They very soon find the difference, however, between the
white-faced visitor and the dark-faced inhabitants. There is a fine
date-tree overhanging a kind of school at the end of one of the
streets in the town of Jubbulpore, quite covered with the nests of
the baya birds; and they are seen, every day and all day, fluttering
and chirping about there in scores, while the noisy children at their
play fill the street below, almost within arm's length of them. I
have often thought that such a tree so peopled at the door of a
school in England might work a great revolution in the early habits
and propensities of the youth educated in it.
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