THE KOOK." 



" "Who that has been brought up in the country has not been accustomed from his 

 infanc)' to hear the cawing of the rookery ; to witness the active labour, and cares, and 

 schemes of these birds in spring ? — has not stood by his father or any other old friend, 

 while the young have been fetched down from the lofty elm by the cross-bow ? — has not 

 run to fetch it as it fell ? — has not clambered into the green tree in which it has, per- 

 haps, lodged in faUing, and hooked it do^vn ? — has not helped the keeper to carry to the 

 house the black feathery bunch of young rooks thus shot, for the cook to convert into 

 the most savoury of country pies ; or to be despatched in different directions as presents 

 to friends ? Who has not, on bright slimmer days, when the young have got abroad, 

 seen them in almost every green oak, or on the tuft of every green meadow, when the 

 country was all flowers and sweetness, with fluttering wings, demanding food from their 

 busy parents ? — and in the still, broad, quiet svmshine of summer evenings, as he sat in 

 garden arbour, or at open window, with the dear old friends of his j'outh, has not often 

 seen them come soberly homewards from their day's wanderings, in a rustling and jetty 

 array, from whose wings the light of the setting sim glanced, seeking those ancient and 

 towering trees, which had overspread the hall for ages ? Who, in the days of warm 

 feeling and expanding affections, when life was a long summer of happiness and gaiety 

 — when, perhaps, the attachment of a life was growing — as he has ridden home in the 

 sweet dusk of a June midnight, has not heard them in their lofty nest, half roused by 



* .Corvus Frugilegus. 



