34 OWLS 



The bank was alive with them. With a stick, I 

 could have killed a dozen or more. They were 

 evidently migrating in a body, as it is known that 

 they sometimes do, and as their congener, the 

 lemming, does, on an enormous scale and under the 

 most mysterious circumstances, in Norway, till they 

 plunge into the sea by thousands, and so, of their 

 own free motion, redress the balance of Nature. 



But what was the explanation of their uncanny 

 leader ? I will hazard one for what it may be worth. 

 Animals which live in communities have been 

 observed, from Homer and the Cyclops' cave down- 

 wards, to have some sort of government amongst 

 themselves. There is generally a bull that lords it 

 over the herd, a ram that leads the flock, a stag 

 that is the monarch of the glen. Bees have, of 

 course, their queen ; and it is not the lusty and the 

 dashing, but the ragged-winged and, as Tennyson 

 describes it, 



" The many-wintered crow which leads the clanging 

 rookery home." 



Why should rats who take up their abode, in some 

 sort of community, in an old country house, or in a 

 barn, or in a rickyard, and who have, as Frank 

 Buckland has shown, very considerable intelligence 



