Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/260

232 or glazed part of the window, although when the sash was down, the lower panes were his favourites. Please to bear this in mind, whilst we consider what prompted the bird to this curious daily performance. At first I thought there must be some insect food close to the window, which invited him. There was none visible, but might there not be some invisible to human eyes? The windows having the rising beams of the sun upon them, rather favoured this supposition, and for a week or two I was content to watch the bird's manoeuvres, and fancied that he was solving (or dis-solving?) a thousand problems each minute of 's "atomic theory." I put some crumbs of wheaten bread upon the window-sill, and as he passed these unheeded by, still jumping and pecking at the window, it must be even as I had supposed. But by and bye came frost, and then severe frost throughout the night and morning. Still my window-peeper came, and kept to his morning toil with undeviating constancy, although the blinds were drawn up before the sun had arisen, and a temperature now prevailed in which it was manifestly impossible that any insects could be abroad. I was confined to my room about four or five days in December, and you may conceive how doubly welcome were the constant tappings of my morning visitor during this confinement. I had leisure to watch him more minutely, and now it occurred to me that the bird saw his own image in the window, which peradventure he took for a lost mate, and this was the real object of his visits. Thus the first impression connected with him was fear, the second, love, and the last, pity. We deeply sympathized with him in his supposed bereavement; and it seemed hard to tell whether he deserved more pity for the loss of his companion, or for the delusion practised upon him by the mirrored window, where only a false image of his lost mate met his advances. It seemed a sad want of discrimination in the bird; but I could not help reflecting that man—reasoning man—makes many attempts almost as visionary and futile in the pursuit of his loved objects. Our mutual friend, Mr. P, whom we call the Gilbert White of the district, from his accurate observance of living creatures, came to see me at this time, and was, of course, introduced to the wagtail. He inclined at once to the supposition that the bird was a disconsolate widower, and mistook his own "mould of form" for the person of his lost mate. I must not forget to say that the bird never came till the blinds were drawn up, but he was so immediately at the window after the first blind was raised, that he must have been watching within sight of the windows, and within a very short distance; and this not casually, but constantly every morning! Is not this a curious part