XV.] 



OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER XV. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SOME intelligent country-people have a notion that we have 

 in these parts a species of the genus mustelinum, besides the 

 weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat; a little reddish beast, not 

 much bigger thau a field mouse, but much longer, which they 

 call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended 

 on ; but further inquiry may be made. 



A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milk-white rooks 

 in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them before they 

 were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed them, to the 

 regret of the owner, who would have been glad to have pre- 

 served such a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds myself 

 nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised to find that 

 their bills, legs, feet, and claws were milk-white. 



[Rooks are continually fighting and pulling each other's nests 

 to pieces : these proceedings are inconsistent with living in 

 such close community. And yet if a pair offer to build on a 

 single tree, the nest is plundered and demolished at once. 

 Some rooks roost on their nest trees. The twigs which the 

 rooks drop in building supply the poor with brushwood to light 

 their fires. Some unhappy pairs are not permitted to finish 

 any nest till the rest have completed their building. As soon 

 as they get a few sticks together, a party comes and demolishes 

 the whole. As soon as rooks have finished their nests, and 

 before they lay, the cocks begin to feed the hens, who receive 

 their bounty with a fondling tremulous voice and fluttering 

 wings, and all the little blandishments that are expressed 

 by the young while in a helpless state. This gallant deport- 

 ment of the males is continued through the whole season of 

 incubation. These birds do not copulate on trees, nor in their 

 nests, but on the ground in the open fields.] 1 



1 After the first brood of rooks are sufficiently fledged, they all resort to 

 some distant place in search of food, but return regularly every evening, in 



