THE ROOK. 311 



the keeper's information to me, on my return home from Bavaria. On 

 the 3ist of the same month, a terrible storm set in. By what the keeper 

 told me, the night must have been as dark and dismal as that in which 

 poor King Lear stood in lamentation, and exposed his hoary lock: 

 to the four rude winds of heaven. A standard white-hart cherry tree, 

 perhaps the finest in Yorkshire, and which, for many generations, had 

 been the pride and ornament of this place, lost two large branches 

 during the gale ; and in the morning, when the keeper rose, he found 

 the cage shattered and upset, and driven to the farthest corner of his 

 garden. The rook was quite dead. It had lost its life, either through 

 the inclemency of that stormy night, or through bruises received in 

 the fall of the cage. Thus both the rooks were unlucky. The old 

 woman, no doubt, could clearly trace their misfortunes to her crow- 

 ing hen. However, the experiment with the two young rooks, though 

 not perfect, has nevertheless been of some use. It has shown us thai 

 the carrion crow makes no distinction betwixt its own eggs and those oi 

 the rook ; that it can know nothing of the actual time required to sit 

 upon eggs in order to produce the young ; that the young of the rook 

 will thrive under the care of the carrion crow, just as well as under 

 that of its own parents ; and, finally, that the feathers fall off from 

 the root of the rook's bill by the order of nature, as was surmised by 

 the intelligent Bewick, and not by the process of the bird's thrusting 

 its bill into the earth, in search of food, as is the opinion of some 

 naturalists. 



The rook advances through the heavens with a very regular and a 

 somewhat tardy beat of wing ! but it is capable of proceeding with 

 great velocity when it chooses ; witness its pursuit and attack on the 

 sparrowhawk and kestrel. It is apt to injure, in the course of time, 

 the elm trees on which it builds its nest, by nipping off the upper- 

 most twigs. But this, after all, is mere conjecture. The damage- 

 may be caused by an accumulation of nests, or by the constant resort 

 of such a number of birds to one tree. Certain, however, it is, that 

 when rooks have taken possession of an elm tree for the purpose of 

 incubation, the uppermost branches of that tree are often subject to 

 premature decay. 



Though the flocks of rooks appear to have no objection to keep 

 company, from time to time, with the carrion crows, in a winter's 



