236 BIRDS OF THE PLAINS 



authority, and not as the Scribes and Pharisees, whose 

 zoological horizon coincides with the limits of the 

 museum. For a period of eighteen months I lived in 

 a station which should be renamed and called Crow- 

 borough. To assert that the place in question swarms 

 with crows is, of course, to assert nothing, for it shares 

 this feature with every other place in India. The point 

 I desire to bring out clearly is that in this particular 

 place the black crows are nearly as numerous as the 

 grey-necked birds. The former are certainly in a 

 minority, but their minority is, like Sir Henry Campbell- 

 Bannerman's in the previous House of Commons, a 

 large one, and what they lack in numbers they make up 

 in weight and beak-force. It was truly delightful to 

 watch them lord it over the grey-necked birds. Gram- 

 marians will observe that I here use the past tense. 

 This is a point of some importance. Just as it is 

 impossible to properly estimate the character of an 

 eminent man during his lifetime, so is it to form a 

 proper opinion of the personality and behaviour of 

 a species of crow while one is in the midst of that 

 species, while one is subjected to the persecutions, the 

 annoyances, and the insults to which it thinks fit to 

 treat one. 



But I am now far away from Crowborough, and I may 

 never again return thither. As I sit upon the Irish 

 shore and see the blue waters of the North Atlantic roll 

 softly up against the black rocks of Antrim, I feel that 

 I am in a position to form a true estimate of the 

 character of Corvus viacrorJiyncJms. 



Until I went to Crowborough I laboured under the 



