WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 271 



by the crook of the claw or by muscular contraction 

 even when perfectly dead, till lifted up by a shot fired 

 directly underneath, or till the bough itself is skilfully 

 cut off by a cartridge and both come down together. 

 The young feathers being soft, and the quills not so 

 hard as in older birds, scarcely a rook-shooting ever 

 goes by without some one claiming to have made a 

 tremendous long shot, which is quite possible, as it 

 does not require many pellets or much force behind 

 them. 



On dropping a rook, probably at some distance 

 from the rookery, where the men are whose duty it 

 is to collect the slain, beware of carrying the bird ; 

 let him lie, or at most throw him upon a bramble 

 bush in a conspicuous spot till a boy comes round. 

 Rooks are perfectly infested with vermin, which in a 

 few minutes will pass up their legs on to your hand, 

 and cause an unpleasant irritation, though it is only 

 temporary, for the insects cannot exist long away 

 from the bird. 



The young birds are occasionally stolen from the 

 nests, notwithstanding the difficulty of access. Young 

 labourers will climb the trees, though so large that 

 they can scarcely grasp the trunk, and with few 

 branches, and those small for some height for elms 

 are often stripped up the trunk to make the timber 

 grow straight and free from the great branches called 

 " limbs. " Even when the marauder is in the tree he 

 has some difficulty in getting at the nests, which are 

 placed where the boughs diminish in size. Climbing 



