nestful of young mynas, but her company rather subdues and sobers him than makes him frivolous or giddy; for as the myna is, his wife is, — of one complexion of feather and mind. A pair of mynas (for these discreet birds are seldom seen except in pairs) remind one of a Dutch burgher and his frau. They are comfortably dressed, well fed, of a grave deportment, and so respectable that scandal hesitates to whisper their name. In the empty babble of the Seven Sisters, the fruitless controversies of finches, the bickerings of amatory sparrows (every sparrow is at heart a rake), or the turmoil of kites, they take no part, — holding aloof alike from the monarchical exclusiveness of the jealous Raptores and the democratic communism of crows. The gourd will Rot climb on the olive, and the olive-tree, it is said, will not grow near the oak. Between the grape of story and the cabbage there is a like antipathy, “and everlasting hate the vine to ivy bears.” The apple detests the walnut, “whose malignant touch impairs all generous fruit.” So with the myna. It shrinks from the neighborhood of the strong, and resents the companionship of the humble. But among vegetables, if there is antipathy there is also sympathy; for does not the Latin poet say that the elm loves the vine? Country folk declare that the fig grows best near rue; and the legend ballad of the Todas tells us how the cachew apple droops when the cinnamon dies. But among the mynas there is no such profligacy or tenderness, and over the annihilation of the whole world of birds they would be even such “pebble stones” as Launce’s dog. At the same time they are not intrusive with their likes and dislikes. If the squirrel chooses to chirrup all day, they let him do so, and they offer no opposition to the ostentatious com-
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Indian Shetches.
