148 THE BOOK. 



in his beloved village home. " The evening 

 proceedings of the rooks are curious and amusing 

 in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in 

 a long string, 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 gloom 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 f He 

 feedeth the ravens who call upon him. 1 "* 



* White's Natural History of Selborne. 



