218 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



preservation both of birds and their eggs ought to be better 

 managed by those on whose property the various species 

 nest than by any legislative restrictions. If landowners and 

 occupiers, game-preservers and game-keepers, would only use 

 whatever brains and common sense Providence may have 

 endowed them with, and learn to discriminate between friends 

 and foes, we lovers of birds for their own sakes should not 

 have much to complain of. Farmers are beginning to know 

 at last that all birds are not their enemies, and ideas of the 

 same sort are working slowly into the brains of some few 

 gamekeepers, and into those of a good number of their 

 masters, so that the aspect of affairs is becoming more 

 hopeful. The question is too delicate and difficult a one to 

 be lightly thrown into the arena of party politics, and it is 

 earnestly to be hoped that means may be found for the 

 protection and preservation, when necessary, of our wild birds 

 and their eggs without having recourse to further legislation. 



THE FEATHER -BILLED ROOK: IS IT A RE- 

 CENTLY DEVELOPED VARIATION OR 

 HITHERTO OVERLOOKED? 



By Robert Service, Maxwelltown. 



It is now fourteen years since I was told by the head game- 

 keeper on a Dumfriesshire estate that he had just been 

 exterminating a Rookery on his grounds. The reason given 

 was rather a startling one. It was that " the Rooks " had all 

 become crossed with carrion crows, and the resultant breed 

 were destroying eggs and every small living thing they came 

 across. Some of these alleged " crosses " were sent me, and 

 sure enough their bills were completely feathered, as in 

 carrion crows, but they were only Rooks, and not " crosses," 

 as a very cursory examination proved. Since then I have 

 paid a considerable amount of attention to our local Rooks, 

 and find a startling proportion of them — I estimate it at 

 about 20 % — retain the feathered bill of juvenility till at least 

 their third year. Without going into any details, I find from 

 correspondence with Ornithologists that the same thing has 



