^2 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



them away. This increased the excited curiosity so 

 much, that the stake was at length, with difficulty, 

 drawn out, which was no sooner done than the body 

 rose to the surface of the water. Inquiries were 

 accordingly made to discover the murderer ; and 

 the wheel-marks of the cart having* been traced to the 

 back of the inn, the master was taken up upon 

 suspicion and confessed his crime*. 



A similar faculty of acute smelling is popularly 

 ascribed to the rook (Corvus prcedatorius) , not for 

 the purpose of procuring food, but for descrying 

 danger. Dr. Darwin has remarked, that a conscious- 

 ness of danger from mankind is much more appa- 

 rent in rooks than in most other birds. " Any one," 

 adds Bingley, " who has in the least attended to them, 

 will see that they evidently distinguish that the danger 

 is greater when a man is armed with a gun than 

 when he has no weapon with him. In the spring of 

 the year, if a person happen to walk under a rookery, 

 with a gun in his hand, the inhabitants of the trees 

 rise on their wings, and scream to the unfledged young 

 to shrink into their nests from the sight of the enemy. 

 The country people, observing this circumstance so 

 uniformly to occur, assert that rooks can smell gun- 

 powder f." We have no doubt, however, that had 

 the writer tried the experiment, as we have done, of 

 presenting his umbrella or his walking-stick at the 

 rooks, they would have been equally alarmed as at the 

 levelling of a double-barrelled fowling-piece. J Their 

 ability to smell gunpowder is evidently a fancy. That 

 rooks, however, have some acute faculty of this kind 

 appears from their remarkable dexterity in discovering 

 their food. " I have often," says Mr. Knapp, " ob- 

 served them alight on a pasture of uniform verdure, 

 and exhibiting no sensible appearance of withering 



* Animaux Celebres, i. 192. 

 f Anim, Biogr.ii.250. J J. R, 



