CHAPTER L 

 THE ROOK 



THE burgher amongst birds, he has all the faults and 

 virtues of his class. He has foresight, cunning, and 

 organisation, but he is vulgar, greedy, and commonplace. 

 A thief from little birds, a coward before fighters, he is a 

 true representative of the big commercial citizen ; also he is 

 fond of his dinner and greedy enough for an alderman. 



His (and her) carriage, too, is that of the plump, well- 

 fed, graceless citizen, ay, even to his bourgeois gait and 

 strut, and lastly, his voice is harsh and uncultured, which 

 completes the simile, unless we add that he is eminently 

 philistinic and respectable, which, poor brute, he cannot 

 help. 



In the early spring, when the buds begin to swell and 

 the trees are greenish of hue, the rooks return to their city, 

 the old birds driving the young away to find a colony 

 for themselves, for a rook city does not increase quickly. 

 There you will see them sitting on their nests or repairing 

 others with little dried sticks, or even building new ones, 

 which only take a few days, if the elders permit it; for 

 theirs is a truly conservative government, and should a 

 pair build without permission, the old birds will go and pull 

 the nest to pieces with vulgar cawings a regular city riot. 

 Nor are they particular where the nests are built; they 

 build in low cars on the marshes, a few feet from the 

 ground, or on the slenderest and most insecure-looking 

 branch near some upland farmstead; they do not, as poor 

 Richard JefFeries asserted, choose a strong fork ; they are 



