THE ROOKERY 373 



very slenderest boughs of the very tallest elms, 

 which they calculate are able to bear their weight ; 

 and it is seldom that they make a mistake. It is 

 seldom that a tree laden with nests no slight 

 addition, in themselves, to an already top-heavy 

 elm is blown down, whatever the force of the 

 wind, or a single nest dislodged so skilfully are 

 they constructed till the work of the breeding 

 season is over. Most amusing is it to watch the 

 rook in all the grotesque antics of his love-making, 

 and most interesting is it to follow the progress 

 of the nest from its first beginning to the very end. 

 The love-sick bird makes desperate efforts to 

 serenade in song the object of his affection, and 

 his well-known caw sometimes rises into a shrill 

 treble, sometimes sinks into a deeper bass. There 

 are few things which love can not accomplish in 

 the world, but it can not make a rook sing. Virgil, 

 the poets' poet, the master of Dante, the author 

 of so many of those single lines which, if heard 

 only once, haunt, for ever afterwards, the chambers 

 of the memory and the imagination, had, in his early 

 youth, watched the rooks near his native Mantua 

 where or whereabouts alone, in Italy, it has been 

 recently observed that they still build in his later 

 life, on the lovely Bay of Naples, recalled, in lines 



