"THE CLANGING ROOKERY" 439 



a plan that has certainly succeeded before, and if some 

 of the rooks that have roosted this winter with ours 

 in the wood have been made homeless by the timber 

 merchants, our neighbour may now get a " black 

 republic " in his oaks. Though it is a question of a 

 whole colony or none, we do not fear for our rooks. 

 It is rarely that they change their quarters, except 

 under dire compulsion, and when they seem to do so 

 we give them credit for seeing some grave reason not 

 apparent to us. No one suggests that the fact that 

 their young are shot in May is a reason, and many 

 go so far as to say that if this annual battue is omitted 

 the rooks will protest, as though on Malthusian 

 grounds, by moving to livelier quarters. A feeble 

 rookery has before now been driven away by a pair 

 of crows taking too frequent toll of their eggs or 

 young, and we do not doubt that great colonies have 

 sometimes seen fit to move because a new style of 

 agriculture has deprived them of their forage. 



The habits of the rook have always been, and will 

 always be, a subject of great interest to man, especially 

 as they are wrapped in a mystery that we can never 

 hope entirely to pierce. The gardener believes, and is 

 not alone in the belief, that the rook has become the 

 wisest and most conventional of birds, because he has 

 always lived within sight of human habitation. But 

 the whole crow tribe, to which he belongs, is a wise 

 one, and most of them are exceedingly chary, in this 

 country, of coming near mankind. It is not so with 

 the crows of India, or with the hooded crow when at 

 home in Norway, where they hang closely about the 

 house, and pick up, together with material trifles, 

 doubtless many shreds of human wisdom. The crow 



