88 THE CARRION CROW. 
positive which can invalidate this assertion. Verily 
when the Professor climbs up to crows’ nests this en- 
suing spring, he will agree with Ovid, that ‘* Causa 
patrocinio, non bona, pejor erit.” 
The carrion crow never covers its eggs on leaving 
the nest; they are generally from three to five, and 
sometimes even six, in number; wonderfully irregular 
in size and shape and colour. This irregularity is so 
very apparent, that on examining the nests of some 
carrion crows with eggs in them, you might fancy 
to yourself that the rook had been there, to add 
one of hers to those already laid by the original 
owner, 
This bird never builds its nest in hedges, but will 
construct it in any of our forest trees; and, with 
me, it seems to give the preference, in general, to 
the oak, the spruce fir, and the Scotch pine. The 
young are hatched naked and blind, and remain 
blind for some days. 
Our phepetors, no doubt, bestowed the epithet 
“ carrion” upon this bird, in order to make a cl¢ar 
and decided distinction between it (whose flesh, tley 
probably supposed, was rank and bad) and the raok, 
the flesh of which was well known to be good and 
wholesome food. Perhaps, too, in those days of 
plenty, and of less trade, the carrion crow had more 
opportunities of tasting flesh than it has in these qur 
enviable times of divers kinds of improvement. 
Were a carrion crow of the present day to depmd 
upon the finding of a dead cow or horse for its dimter, 
would soon become an adept in the art of fasting by 
actual experiment; for, no sooner is one of tlese 
animals, in our neighbourhood, struck by the hind 
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