100 ALONG THE HILLSBOROUGH. 
ery, not a voice missing! How they had 
managed it was beyond my ken. 
Another island, farther out than that of 
the rails (but the rails, like the long-billed 
marsh wrens, appeared to be present in 
force all up and down the river, in suitable 
places), was occupied nightly as a crow- 
roost. Judged by the morning clamor, 
which, like that of the rails, | heard from 
my bed, its population must have been enor- 
mous. One evening I happened to come 
up the street just in time to see the hinder 
part of the procession — some hundreds of 
birds — flying across the river. They came 
from the direction of the pine lands in 
larger and smaller squads, and with but a 
moderate amount of noise moved straight 
to their destination. All but one of them 
so moved, that is to say. The performance 
of that one exception was a mystery. He 
rose high in the air, over the river, and 
remained soaring all by himself, acting 
sometimes as if he were catching insects, 
till the flight had passed, even to the last 
scattering detachments. What could be 
the meaning of his eccentric behavior ? 
Some momentary caprice had taken him, 
