218 DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



lessened their food supply. If there is any distinction, it 

 is an all-hearing ear that can detect it. To the average 

 rambler they croak, and nothing more. It is the same 

 note now that is heard at short intervals all summer long, 

 and that they utter in early spring when they join in a 

 deafening epithalamium. 



But one glory of the time of early frosts has well-nigh 

 departed but fitfully, at best, do the roostward flying 

 crows pass over. No more are seen the long lines that 

 streaked the eastern sky a scarcely broken procession, 

 whose front reached the meadows about 2 p. M., and the 

 rear rank was still on the move as the sun went down. 

 This, thirty years ago, was so regular a feature of each 

 autumn and winter day that the old hall clocks of the 

 farmers along the ridge might well have been regulated 

 by it. The crow-roost of recent years, to which these birds 

 flocked at night, was in Pennsylvania, about Rocky Woods 

 and in the Pigeon Swamp. I give these particulars for a 

 purpose, being a Jerseyman. 



In the " American Naturalist " for August, 1886, Mr. 

 Samuel W. Rhoades has published an interesting article on 

 these birds and their habits, but at the very outset I am 

 puzzled at certain of his statements. He writes : " Care- 

 ful observation and inquiry convince me that during 

 winter a radial sweep of one hundred miles, described 

 from the city of Philadelphia and touching the cities of 

 New York, Harrisburg, and Baltimore, will include in the 

 day-time, in its western semicircle, fully two thirds of the 

 crows inhabiting North America, and at night an equal 

 proportion of its eastern half. The eastern area of this 

 circle, with the exception of more fertile portions of west 

 and north Jersey, is as notably devoid of them by day as 

 it is infested by them at night. Their most extensive 

 breeding grounds in New Jersey are well-nigh deserted 

 during severe weather. 



