II.
VISITORS IN FEATHERS.
AMONG the common objects of my Indian Garden is the Corvus splendens. Such at any rate is the scientific name given by Vieillot to that “trebledated bird,” the common crow of India, and although one naturalist yearned to change it to “shameless” (impudicus), and although another still declares that splendens is inappropriate and tends to bring scientific nomenclature into ridicule, that bird — as was only to be expected from a crow — has kept its mendacious adjective, and in spite of every one is still, in name, as fine a bird in India as it was time out of mind in Olympus. Splendens or not at present, the crow must have had recommendations either of mind or person to have been chosen, as Ovid tells us it was, as the messenger-bird of so artistic a deity as Apollo. But the crow lost paradise — and good looks with it — not for one impulsive act, but for a fortnight’s hard sinning. Now punishment has a hardening influence on some people, and it has had a most dreadful effect on the corvine disposition. Heedless of all moral obligations, gluttonous, and a perverter of truth, Ovid tells us it was, even in its best days; but now it has developed into a whole legion of devilry. Lest a Baboo should think to trip me up by throwing Menu in my teeth and quoting from the great lawgiver, “A good wife should be like a
