56 HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 



pursuer apparently considered discretion was the better 

 part of valour, for I never saw him actually strike his 

 quarry. I should imagine that food could be easily 

 obtained on easier terms than by an encounter with 

 so powerful and awkward a customer, and the whole 

 proceeding looked more like some sort of game than 

 the thrilling and exciting chase after duck, curlew, and 

 grouse which it has more than once been my privilege 

 to witness. 



One bird of the crow tribe, once common enough, 

 but now nearly extinct in England, was an everyday 

 sight in all the northern part of the island. I allude 

 to the chough, whose shrill metallic cry, glossy 

 plumage, and dark orange beak and legs, made it easy 

 to distinguish from the jackdaw. Why have these 

 birds become so uncommon in all their old haunts ? 

 I have seen a few on Jura, and on portions of the 

 mainland of Argyllshire, but never come across one 

 during my occasional visits to Devonshire and their 

 native Cornwall, although I have heard that they 

 have not altogether disappeared from those coasts. 

 Not only song and ballad, but Statute and picture, 

 testify to their former abundance. A Statute of 

 Henry the Eighth, passed in 1532, proves that even 

 the attractions of Anne Boleyn, whom he married that 

 year, could not divert his attention from " the in- 

 numerable number of Rooks, Crows, and Choughs 

 which do daily breed and increase throughout the 

 realm, which Rooks, Crows, and Choughs do yearly 

 destroy, devour and consume a wonderful and marvel- 

 lous quantity of Corn and Grain of all kinds ; that is 

 to wit as well in the sowing of the said Corn and Grain, 

 as also at the ripening and kernelling of the same, 



