Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/169

Rh is also the ruin of a little chapel, with its stone altar still in situ. The situation is superb, and were the ruins less ruinous, the scene from the little bay that commands the headland would be hardly surpassed. On Barras Head, opposite, a company are erecting a fashionable modern hotel.

About the cliffs may still be seen the Cornish chough, with its scarlet legs, but the bird is becoming scarce. The south coast of Cornwall is now entirely deserted by the choughs, and the only remaining colonies are found at intervals on the side facing the Atlantic. Unhappily visitors are doing their utmost to get them exterminated by buying the young birds that are caught and offered for sale. But the jack-daws are also driving them, and probably in-and-in breeding is leading to their diminution. The choughs not being migratory birds, and sticking much to the same localities, those who desire to obtain their eggs or rob the nests of the young know exactly which are their haunts year by year.

"The free wild temperament of choughs," writes Mr. A. H. Malan, "will not brook any confinement, but must have absolute liberty and full exercise for their wings. If this is not the case, they generally get an attack of asthma, which usually proves fatal, in their first year. "Everyone has seen a chough, if only in a museum; and therefore knows the beautiful glossy black of the adult plumage, the long wings crossed over the back and extending beyond the squared tail, the long, slender red legs, and the brilliant red curved bill. But only those who have kept them know their marvellous docility. You may train a falcon to sit on your wrist and come down to the lure, with infinite labour; but to a chough brought up from the