82 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



among their neighbours. Why, then, were the 

 robbers not attacked, and seeing that they waited 

 their time and went quietly and recovered their 

 own, why all that preliminary fuss ? It sometimes 

 happens, we know, that the entire rookery becomes 

 infuriated against a particular pair ; that in such 

 cases they fall upon and demolish the nest, and in 

 extreme cases expel the offenders from the rookery. 

 I take it that such attacks are made only on the in- 

 corrigible ones, those that obtain all their materials 

 by thieving, and so make themselves a nuisance to 

 the community. It seems probable that in this 

 instance the colony, although excited at the news 

 of the robbery and the outcry made by the 

 victimised pair, declined to take too serious a view 

 of the matter, and after some discussion and 

 quarrelling left the angry couple to manage their 

 own affairs. We may think, too, that in a majority 

 of cases an occasional offence is condoned among 

 birds that have a social law but do not observe it 

 very strictly. Thus, at home, the rook is a stealer 

 of sticks when the occasion offers, and a wooer of 

 his neighbour's wife when his neighbour is out of 

 the way. Too severe a code would not do ; it 

 would, in fact, upset the whole community, and 

 rooks would have to go and live like carrion crows, 

 each pair by itself. At all events, in this instance 

 we see that only after the angry outcry made by 

 the victims had failed to bring about an attack 

 they quietly waited their opportunity to recover 

 their property. Then the meek way in which the 



