Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/98

Earth plays the part of Moses. She receives the "old clo" and opens a shop, and her customers are numerous and beggarly. The earthworm sneaks up from the ground and draws a rotten leaf down into its burrow, the white ants swarm everywhere, bargaining for remnants; earwigs and vagabond cockroaches wander about, examining everything and taking nothing. In such a crowd it goes without saying that there will be no lack of sharpers, pickpockets, and cut-throats, making victims of the ignorant and unwary. These are called centipedes, scorpions, predacious beetles, wolf-spiders and so forth. In short, the carpet of dead leaves which is spread in every forest, grove, and neglected garden, affords a habitation and a livelihood to a vast and very varied multitude of creatures, which have this special interest for us to-day, that there are many kinds of birds whose sole business it is to look sharply after them. Among these are many species of long-legged ground Thrushes, and foremost among them is the Babbler. The Babbler is seldom spoken of in the singular. The natives call it Satbhai, the Seven Brothers; in other parts it is known as the Seven Sisters. You cannot think of it except as a member of a small party. It may be a family party, father, mother, and grown-up children; but I do not think so. I believe it is simply a social party. Among animals there is not the same diversity of individual character as among men, nor the same variety: all the individuals of one species are cast pretty much in the same simple mould. But for this very reason each species exhibits more distinctly some one or other of the elements that go to make up the complex human character. Every virtue and every vice in the moral