142 IN PAIRING TIME 



of the Crow kind, and how almost unlimited their 

 appetites, it is hard to understand how the male bird 

 should have come to collect food in its own mouth, 

 without even the incentive of the presence of the 

 female bird whilst doing so, and then to bear it to 

 the distant rookery on watering tongue, and give it 

 up entirely. That it is at times a duty hard of per- 

 formance can be readily observed by any who will 

 watch ; and the importunate cries of the female bird 

 are due not only to her desire for the food, but to the 

 recognition that continual moral pressure has to be 

 brought to bear in order to overcome the strong 

 natural desire in the male to retain it ; for, sometimes, 

 when solicited, he opens his bill narrowly and with 

 reluctance, and having yielded up a portion of the 

 food, wipes his bill on the bough with the air of one 

 laying aside his napkin; but the female is accus- 

 tomed to this little subterfuge, and her vociferous 

 stormings cause him to give up a further portion of 

 the food he has brought. Again the wiping 

 of the bill, and the demand of the female for 

 the last morsel. In the end, having given up all, he 

 sits there for a few moments, silent, miserably 

 righteous, the possesser of a sort of negative 

 conscience able to make him uncomfortable by 

 forbidding the natural satisfaction of his own appetite, 

 but witholding the moral satisfaction that comes of 

 conscious self-denial. 



Not the worst of Rook-husbands is he who gives 

 up even reluctantly the food he has brought. On 

 the 1 2th April, 1905, there came under my notice an 

 instance of a male rook refusing to go for food at all. 

 The pair had their nest: whether or not they had in 



