SEPTEMBER. 219 



" The popular local notion that crows all ' go to Jersey 

 to roost ' and return to Pennsylvania to forage, while far 

 from correct, has more truth in it than the average Jer- 

 seyman will admit," and I add, the average Jerseyman is 

 correct in denying it. For over a century, the crows have 

 roosted on the Pennsylvania side of the river, as all can 

 see for themselves of an autumn afternoon, and if these 

 same people will be astir at dawn, they can see the same 

 crows coming back to Jersey, where they will forage until 

 noon. Fools if they didn't ! There is a wonderful differ- 

 ence between the two sides of the river in the matter of 

 temperature, and so follows a difference in plant and ani- 

 mal life. Many a day the winter through, when a crow 

 would starve in Pennsylvania, amid snow and ice, the 

 ground would be not only bare but unfrozen in Jersey. 

 How the impression got abroad, and became so general, 

 that all Jersey was a crow-roost and never a bird flew 

 westward during the afternoon, I can not learn, but it 

 does not hold good in the writer's region. 



Mr. Ehoades says : " As yet no evidence is at hand to 

 justify the supposition that the roosting-place which Wil- 

 son and Godman have vaguely described as situated ' near 

 Bristol ' was in Pennsylvania. It seems more probable that 

 it was located either on Burlington Island or on the main- 

 land near the site of the city of Burlington, in New Jersey." 



There is evidence, though, for the spot has been but 

 recently disturbed, and I live on a line with the main 

 flight that, so long as I can remember, crossed over the 

 river and continued westward into Pennsylvania for some 

 three miles. Both this and the Florence Heights roosts 

 were occupied at about the same time ; and if, as stated, 

 the latter was deserted forty-five years ago, it was again 

 reoccupied by a small colony an off-shoot possibly of the 

 overcrowded one in Pennsylvania, four or five miles west 

 of it. 



