364 The Natural History of Selborne 



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. 



