OF SELBORNE. 199 
About Midsummer a flight of crossbills comes 
to the pine-groves about this house, but never makes 
any long stay. 
The old tortoise that [ have mentioned in a for- 
mer letter still continues in this garden; it retired 
under ground about the 20th of November, and 
came out again for one day on the 30th; it lies now 
buried in a wet swampy border, under a wall facing 
to the south, and is enveloped at present in mud 
and mire! 
Here is a large rookery round this house, the 
inhabitants of which seem to get their livelihood 
very easily, for they spend the greatest part of the 
day on their nest-trees when the weather is mild. 
These Rooxs retire every evening all the winter 
S 
— 3 
eit 
esd 
trom this rookery, where they only call by the way, 
as they are going to roost in deep woods: at the 
dawn of day they always revisit their nest-trees, 
and are preceded a few minutes by a flight of 
daws, that act, as it were, as their harbingers.* 
* Rooks are continually fighting and pulling each other’s nests 
to pieces: these proceedings are inconsistent with living in 
