290 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



been a wood there time out of mind : there are refer- 

 ences to the woods of the locality dating from the 

 sixteenth century. Now if we suppose (and such 

 seems to have been really the case) the unenclosed 

 woodlands below gradually cleared of trees, thereby 

 doubtless destroying many rookeries, the rooks driven 

 away would naturally take refuge in the wood re- 

 maining. There the enclosure protected them, and 

 there the trees, being seldom or never cut down, or 

 if cut down felled with judgment and with a view to 

 future timber, grew to great size and in such large 

 groups as they prefer. But as birds are creatures of 

 habit, their descendants in the fiftieth generation 

 would still revisit the old places in the meadows. 



Secondly, although so many successive " throws " of 

 timber thinned out the trees, yet there may still be 

 found more groups and rows of elms and oak in this 

 direction than in any other that is, a line drawn 

 northwards from the remaining wood passes through 

 a belt of well-timbered country. On either side of 

 this belt there is much less timber ; so that the rooks 

 that desired to build nests beyond the limits of the 

 enclosed wood still found in the old places the best 

 trees for their purpose. Here may be seen far more 

 rookeries than in any other direction. Hardly a farm- 

 house lying near this belt but has got its rookery, 

 large or small. Once these rookeries were established, 

 an inducement to follow this route would arise in the 

 invariable habit of the birds of visiting their nesting- 

 trees even when the actual nesting time is past. 



