Birds, lAf9 



conclude that the stray walnuts were such as had been acci- 

 dentally dropped by the birds in their attempt to extract the 

 kernels from the shells. Whatever may be urged in pre- 

 judice of the rooks, and, besides eating a few walnuts, they 

 certainly do peck up and devour a portion of the newly sown 

 corn, they ought to be regarded as useful and beneficial crea- 

 tures to man, and by intelligent persons are generally allowed 

 to be so, for the reasons so ably shown by T. G. in VI. 142. 



— TV, T, Bree. Allesley Rectory, June 12. 1833. 



The partiality of rooks for walnuts is such as to render 

 it not unprofitable, in an orchard of walnut trees, to keep a 

 boy as a scarecrow, or rather scarerook, to prevent their 

 helping themselves to the walnuts too extensively. A rook, 

 having plucked a walnut, will, in its wariness, usually fly off to 

 a common, or any open place which may be not very distant, 

 to eat it unmolested. Occasionally a rook is induced to abandon 

 uninjured a walnut or other nut which it had borne off from 

 the tree that had yielded it, and such nut may, and in some 

 instances doubtless does, vegetate and produce a tree ; and 

 hence, and from similar accidents with other birds, it is that 

 birds form one of the classes enumerated by naturalists in 

 their catalogue of Nature's agents in disseminating plants. 

 (See V. 527. note *.) The springing of an oak tree from 

 an acorn buried by " a raven" has been likened to Melan- 

 choly burying Hope, '* which Providence still keeps alive," 

 in eight lines of poetry published in Dr. Hodson's selection 

 of poems called The Bouquet, 2 vols. 8vo. 1 792. The lines 

 were copied off " a pane of glass at Kingsgate ;" and, although 

 entitled " a fable," describe an incident very likely to have 

 happened : the poet, perchance, mistaking a rook for a raven. 



— J. Z). 



Companies of Rool^s delight to assemble and build near human 

 Residences. — Mr. Jennings and others entertain this idea; 

 and the following fact tends to establish it. In the grounds 

 of Mr. Hope, at Deepdene, there are some trees on which 

 rooks used to build invariably before the mansion was de- 

 stroyed. This house stood close by the trees. Mr. Hope 

 added Chart Park to his own at Deepdene ; and, as he did 

 not wish to keep both mansions, the old Chart House was 

 pulled down. No rooks have built on the trees since, though 

 the trees remain in precisely the same state. — W. Fowler, 

 Dec, 17. 1834. 



Instances of Enmity evinced by the Rooh and the Magpie to the 

 Kestrel Hawk. (p. 105.) — ^I'was much amused, the other day, in 

 witnessing an engagement that took place, over a small grove, 

 between a kestrel hawk, five magpies, and four rooks. My 

 attention was called, when at some distance, by the loud cries 



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