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depot, breaking at last into that funny ungainly run 

 that one is so familiar with in the person of the tame 

 Jackdaw. Having scattered the earlier guests he 

 made a good meal, and finally took a good fragment 

 away and hid it under the box edging of a flower 

 border. For fully an hour afterwards he walked about 

 the garden, and several times tried to bathe in a small 

 flanged feeding vessel, originally designed for rabbits, 

 about four inches across, which was in a sheltered 

 corner and contained a little unfrozen water. He 

 stayed on the premises exactly a week, roosting in one 

 or other of the trees, and at last disappeared as mys- 

 teriously as he came, directly after preaching a noisy 

 sermon to a neighbour's cat, which was at the time in 

 the next apple tree to the one he had for the moment 

 appropriated. 



Now what was this Rook ? Was he a domesticated 

 or partially domesticated specimen ? or was he a purely 

 wild bird led by stress of weather and the presence 

 of food to take up a temporary lodging amongst the 

 abodes of man ? His comparative tameness and the 

 unconcerned way in which he investigated all the odd 

 corners of the garden pointed to the former, but on 

 the other hand he had the ugly bare patch on the front 

 of the skull, the perfect quill feathers in tail and wing, 

 and that general gloss and smart condition of plumage 

 which are popularly associated with a wild bird. In 

 this latter case it is just possible that his departure 

 was determined by the presence of the cat. The true 

 explanation may however be that, like another instance 

 to be presently noticed, he was originally a tame bird 

 with a cut wing, but had subsequently escaped after a 

 moult and reverted to a state of freedom. 

 {To be continued.) 



