ROOKS AND ROGUE ELEPHANTS 55 



something like the rude beginnings of the state at 

 which rooks have arrived. They do not flock in any 

 numbers, but bands of six or seven, and upwards, 

 will sometimes fly about together, or sit in the same 

 tree or group of trees. On the ground, too, 

 though they feed in a much more scattered manner 

 than do rooks, not seeming to think of one another, 

 they yet get drawn together by any piece of gar- 

 bage or carrion that one or other of them may find. 

 In this we, perhaps, see the origin of the gregarious 

 instinct in most birds, if not in all. Self-interest 

 first makes a habit, which becomes, by degrees, a 

 want, and so a necessity ; for if '* custom is the king 

 of all men," as Pindar has pronounced it to be, so 

 is it the king of all birds, and, equally, of all other 

 animals. 



I think, myself, that their association with the 

 rooks tends to make these crows more social. They 

 get to feed more as they do, and this brings them 

 more together. In the evening I have, sometimes, 

 seen a few fly down into a plantation where rooks 

 roosted, and which they already filled, and one I 

 once saw flying, with a small band of them, on their 

 bedward journey. Whether this bird, or the others, 

 actually roosted with the rooks, for the night, I 

 cannot say, but it certainly looked like it. On the 

 other hand, if one watches rooks, one will, some- 

 times, see what looks like a reversion, on the part 

 of an individual or two, to a less advanced social 

 state than that in which the majority now are. 

 Whether there are solitary rooks, as there are rogue 

 elephants, I do not know, but the gregarious 

 instinct may certainly be for a time in abeyance 



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