THE ROOK. 221 



maintain that the Rook can smell gunpowder, simply 

 because the Rook has through experience learnt to shun 

 all suspicious objects. You may, by merely throwing 

 up a stick to your shoulder, as if it were a gun, send a 

 whole flock of Rooks scurrying off with as much alarm as 

 though you had actually fired at them. Persecuted so 

 closely by the farmer, the Rook, in self-defence, becomes 

 extremely cunning, and it is only at very rare intervals 

 you can approach him within gunshot, unless in the 

 breeding season, or when lost in a fog. 



Before leaving the Rook, I should like to say a few 

 words respecting the bare patch of skin on his throat 

 and at the base of his beak. We are still told that the 

 Rook, by continually digging in the ground, wears off 

 in course of time all the feathers on these parts. The 

 matter has been so extensively discussed and investi- 

 gated by the late Charles Waterton, that I think further 

 remarks from me unnecessary. But I would just add 

 that this bareness is natural to the Rook alone, and if 

 digging were the cause of it, the Magpie, the Jay, the 

 Blackbird, and the Thrush, should all have this scarcity 

 of feathers on these parts. Further, the Rook never 

 buries his beak in the ground to such a depth as to rub 

 the feathers off the throat, and during the intervals of 

 his digging, which for the most part takes place in 

 seed time, the feathers have ample time to grow again, 

 which they never do ; for as soon as the birds have 

 completed their first autumnal moult these parts become 

 bare, ever after to remain so. 



