THE CORNISH CHOUGH AS INCENDIARY. [To TUX EDITOlt Or THE
" SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Your article of April 17th on "A Book of the Road" touches incidentally upon the Cornish chough and its reputa- tion as au "incendiary." This scrap of folk-lore from the neighbourhood of St. Michael's Mount seems locally to connect the chough with that inauspicious bird which Pliny mentions as "The Incendiary," but with scientific caution refuses to identify (" Hist. Nat.," X., 17), where he says that some consider this a mune applied to every bird seen to carry a burning coal from the pyre or altar, and that others call the bird "Spinturnix." He speaks elsewhere (X., 68) of the "Pyrrhocorax" (chough) without reference to the legend.
Morris in his "British Birds" (Vol. I., p. alludes. to the thieving character of the chough, and says : "They have in Booth a 'monomania' for petty larceny, especially of glittering objects ; and it is said that houses have been set on fire by lighted sticks which they have carried off." One would like to know whether actual instances are recorded, for this explanation of the choug,h's reputation would in that case
seem adequitte.—I am, Sir, &c., H. M. BOWER. Trinity Hill, _Ripon.
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