A PICTURESQUE VILLAGE. 143 



claimed for cultivation. The improvement is expected to be 

 amply remunerative in the end, and it is one of the unlooked- 

 for results of free trade, which are to be met with in every 

 part of the country, that a landlord is compelled by circum 

 stances, various in kind, to improve the neglected portions 

 of his estate, and which, without such impelling cause, might 

 have long lain unproductive. Every such improvement is 

 not merely an addition to the arable land of the kingdom, but 

 it becomes also an increased source of employment to the 

 labourer.&quot; 



I witnessed immense injury done to turnip crops by 

 shooting over them in Scotland. I was once visiting a farmer 

 there, when for a whole half day a &quot;gentleman&quot; with three 

 dogs, was trampling down his Swedes, not once going out of 

 the field. He was a stranger, and the farmer said it would 

 do no good to remonstrate ; he would only be laughed at 

 and insulted. 



We passed near a rookery, and the keeper was good 

 enough to shoot one of the rooks for us to look at. It was a 

 shorter-winged and rather heavier bird than our crow, with 

 also a larger head and a peculiar thick bill. At a distance 

 the difference would not be readily distinguished. The caw 

 was on a lower note, and more of a parrot tone, much like 

 the guttural croak of a fledgling crow. The keeper did not 

 confirm the farmer s statement of their quality for the table. 

 When they were fat they made a tolerable pie only, he said, 

 not as good as pigeons. The rookery was, as we have often 

 seen it described, a collection of crows -like nests among the 

 tops of some large trees. 



We turned off from the river a little ways to look at Eccle- 

 ston, a kind of pet village of the marquis, on the border 

 of the park, and about the prettiest we saw in England, 

 though rather too evidently kept up for show. 



