110 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



Evening exercises in autumn. 



resort to some distant place in search of' food : 

 but return regularly every evening, in vast flights, 

 to their nest-trees ; where, after flying round se- 

 veral times with much noise and clamour till 

 they are all assembled together, they take up 

 their abode for the night. 



A celebrated writer, speaking of the evening 

 exercises of these birds in the autumn, remarks, 

 that just before dusk they return in long string* 

 from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by 

 thousands over Selborne Down, where they wheel 

 round, and dive in a playful manner in the air, 

 exerting their voices; which being softened by 

 the distance, become a pleasing murmur, not 

 unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in deep-echo- 

 ing woods. When this ceremony is over, with 

 the least gleam of light they retire to the deep 

 beech woods of Tisted and Kepley. " We re- 

 member," says our author, " a little girl, who as 

 she was going to bed used to remark, on such 

 an occurrence, in the true spirit of physico-theo- 

 logy, that the rooks were saying their prayers ; 

 and yet this child was much too young to be 

 aware that the Scriptures have said of the Deity 

 that ' he teedeth the ravens, who call upon 

 him." 



In those parts of Hampshire which lie conti- 

 guous to the New Forest, after the parent rooks 

 have reared their progeny, and carried off such 

 of them as have escaped the arts of men and 

 boys, they retire every evening at a late hour, 



