198 SECOND VaSIT. TO - TFHE NORTH OF hen. 
in the year, and some others might be nest- 
ing in it. 
On the way to the station we passed a 
pretty little church of Dickens fame, where 
the ten little graves of Pip’s ten little 
brothers (Dickens mentions only five) can be 
seen (see Dickens’ Great Expectations, p. 1). 
We flushed a partridge in a field. The noise 
its wings make when rising is always loud 
and quite startling if unexpected. I was 
struck with how it resembles the noise a 
horse makes as he clears his wind passages 
sometimes when pulling a heavy cart up hill. 
Being now evening many rooks were return- 
ing to their roosting-trees (the old and 
young birds had quitted the rookeries to 
frequent the meadows (see Part II, p. 84). 
A large oak far away from houses was the 
chosen tree for one colony. The birds arrived 
over it all together and one by one they 
wheeled down, with a babel of cawing, 
a typical scene of old England this! Others 
had not yet left the fields and sat motion- 
less, replete, doubtless, with a good repast, 
