210 BRITISH FERTILITY. 



are, sable farm fowls of a wider range. Young rooks 

 are esteemed a great delicacy. The four-and-twenty 

 blackbirds baked in a pie, and set before the king, of 

 the nursery rhyme, were very likely four-and-twenty 

 young crows. Crow-pie is a national dish, and it 

 would seem as if the young birds are slaughtered in 

 sufficient numbers to exterminate the species in a few 

 years. But they have to be kept under, like the rab- 

 bits ; inasmuch as they do not emigrate, like the peo- 

 ple. I had heard vaguely that our British cousins 

 eschewed all pie except crow-pie, but I did not fully 

 realize the fact till I saw them shooting the young 

 birds and shipping them to market. A rookery in 

 one's grove or shade trees may be quite a source of 

 profit. The young birds are killed just before they 

 are able to fly, and when they first venture upon the 

 outer rim of the nest or perch upon the near branches. 

 I witnessed this chicken-killing in a rookery on the 

 banks of the Doon. The ruins of an old castle 

 crowned the height overgrown with forest trees. In 

 these trees the crows nested, much after the fashion 

 of our wild pigeons. A young man with a rifle was 

 having a little sport by shooting the young crows for 

 the gamekeeper. There appeared to be fewer than 

 a hundred nests, and yet I was told that as many as 

 thirty dozen young crows had been shot there that 

 season. During the firing the parent birds circle 

 high aloft, uttering their distressed cries. Appar- 

 ently, no attempt is made to conceal the nests ; they 

 are placed far out upon the branches, several close 



