198 WITHIN AN HOUR OF LONDON TOWN. 



cawing in high glee, as they thrash the acorns 

 down in showers, like flocks of pigeons. As the 

 day is hot and cloudless, and not a leaf or twig 

 is stirring, we can see all their movements to per- 

 fection, looking right down on them as we do 

 from the higher ground. A rook will have nuts 

 if he risks his life for them. During the last 

 fortnight I have watched these birds strip a large 

 walnut-tree, right in front of my painting -room 

 window. When they had finished amongst the 

 boughs they very deliberately searched the ground 

 at the foot of the tree for all the nuts they 

 had dropped. These amusing thieves, dressed in 

 shining black, are most wideawake and sagacious 

 birds. Filberts and cobnuts they have a weak- 

 ness for, as well as walnuts ; the shell of the fine 

 nuts being thin, they can split them open with 

 one dig of the pick-axe bill. It is only when he 

 can get no more of these by hook or by crook 

 that the rook condescends to visit the oak-trees. 

 In spite of all his astute calculations, he is a 

 little out of his reckoning at times, for pigs are 

 turned out in the fallow field in mast-time to get 

 their own living. Vicious, snapping, and chop- 



