LONDON BIRDS 11 



estimate of a thousand would have been rather under 

 than over the mark. 



A charge of smallshot, fired at random into any one 

 of several trees within easy shot of the spot at which 

 the observers stood, could scarcely have failed to bring 

 down ten or a dozen birds, and this some time before 

 all had settled in for the night, and when the upper 

 boughs of one of the largest trees to the south of the 

 ornamental water was peopled so thickly as to look in 

 the distance in the fading light as if clothed with a 

 fresh crop of leaves. 



Two very interesting papers on ' The Rooks and 

 Rookeries of London,' the one by Dr. Hamilton, the 

 other by Professor Alfred Newton, are to be found in 

 the Zoologist. The tale told is a sad one, and the 

 conclusion drawn seems only too probable : ' The 

 Rooks and Rookeries so pleasant to old Londoners 

 are gradually diminishing and disappearing, and the 

 London Rook to our grandchildren will be a bird of 

 the past.' 



In the spring of 1893 there seemed good reason for 

 hoping that the Rooks had decreed that nesting was 

 again to be allowed in Kensington Gardens. The 

 rookery there had in its palmy days contained a 

 hundred nests or more ; and as lately as 1878 or 1879 

 from thirty to forty were commonly to be counted. 

 But the wholesale felling of ancestral elms a few years 

 ago was a slight which could not be passed over, and 

 since then until 1892, when one pair built obscurely 

 in the south-west corner not a Rook bred in the 



