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The head is always of a grizzled grey; and it is this appearance that has obtained for the animal its specific name. There are brown, reddish-brown, bay or cinnamon coloured, and white-breasted varieties of the black bear; but the Indians can distinguish all these from the true grizzly at a glance.
Two brindled, white-breasted greyhounds, with strong collars of rubies, sported round him, and his courser cast up four sods with its four hoofs like four swallows about his head. Upon the steed was a four-cornered cloth of purple, and an apple of gold was at each corner.
Being a man, I regret their departure; but if I were a crow, I think I should be for observing the 31st of August as a day of annual jubilee. A few years ago, in September, I saw the white-breasted swallows congregated in the Ipswich dunes, a sight never to be forgotten.
You may hear it, too, any fine soft day if you will sit there looking out on Fair Head and Rathlin Island, and read the old fairy tale. When you put down the book you will see Finola, Lir's lovely daughter, in any white-breasted bird; and while she covers her brothers with her wings, she will chant to you her old song in the Gaelic tongue. A name given by the Druids to St. Patrick.
The beautiful white-breasted creatures rose on their long narrow wings, and flapped and floated away. From force of habit, Fred took up a stone and threw it after the birds, not with any prospect of hitting them, for they were a couple of hundred yards away. "Wish I could fly like that," said Scarlett. "Look at them; they're going right over the Rill Head."
While I am not able to add any new species to science, I have made note of many pleasing incidents in the bird realm, and these, I venture to hope, may be of not a little general interest. There is the companionable white-breasted nuthatch which goes scudding up and down the tree trunks with as much ease and aplomb as a fly gliding over a window-pane. I have already told you something about him.
Over the broad lake swept purple martins and white-breasted swallows, and nearer the shore fed peacefully a few pied-billed grebes, or dabchicks, birds that I had seen only two or three times before, and at which I looked more than once before I made out what they were. They had every appearance of passing a winter of content.
"No more hunts then," thought Aleck; and then aloud to a great white-breasted gull which floated overhead, watching him curiously, "Well, what are you looking at? I've not come egging now." The gull uttered a mournful cry and glided off seaward, to dive down directly after beyond the cliff, its cry sounding distant and faint.
And he caused twelve chargers to appear, and twelve black greyhounds, each of them white-breasted, and having upon them twelve collars and twelve leashes, such as no one that saw them could know to be other than gold. And upon the horses twelve saddles, and every part which should have been of iron was entirely of gold, and the bridles were of the same workmanship.
No little glossy dark heads were to be seen peeping out of the clay-built nests under the eaves, and no white-breasted flyers skimmed the lawn. Yes, the swallows were indeed gone, and the Blackbird sadly realised the fact that the summer and its singers were gone too, left far behind in the months of long ago.
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