380 The Natural History of Se I borne 



curlew (charadrius oedicnemus). Some of them pass over or 

 near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the 

 uplands of the hill and North Fields, away down towards 

 Dorton, where, among the streams and meadows, they find 

 a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are obliged 

 to be noisy ; their notes often repeated become signals or 

 watch-words to keep them together, that they may not stray 

 or lose each the other in the dark. 



The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are 

 curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they 

 return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and 

 rendezvous by thousands over Selborne Down, where they 

 wheel round in the air and sport and dive in a playful 

 manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud 

 cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance 

 that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused 

 noise or chiding ; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging 

 to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of 

 hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind 

 in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. 

 When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they 

 retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and 

 Ropley. We remember a little girl who, as she was going to 

 bed, used to remark on such an occurrence, in the true spirit 

 of physico-theology, that the rooks were saying their prayers ; 

 and yet this child was much too young to be aware that the 

 Scriptures have said of the Deity that " he feedeth the ravens 

 who call upon him." I am, &c. 



