RAVENING ROOKS 47 



amusement in spring. A pitiful sight it is, to be 

 sure, the massacre of a colony just at the period 

 when the law protects most breeding birds; and 

 the only justification for it is that of necessity. In 

 Scotland it is far otherwise. There, nobody ever 

 thinks of shooting rooks for sport, and few people do 

 so from motives of police. The consequence is that 

 they are multiplying beyond all due limits ; they have 

 the marauding propensity of the crow tribe, and 

 other and more beautiful or interesting species are suf- 

 fering from their depredations. I feel rather bitterly 

 on this matter just now, having had to mourn last 

 spring the loss of a nest of Canadian wood-duck 

 eggs, pilfered by a pair of these swarthy miscreants. 

 True, there are sinister whispers abroad that the 

 mischief was wrought by jays, which, as described 

 above, we have succeeded in re-establishing in 

 Galloway, a district whence they had been absent 

 for centuries. But inasmuch as there was no eye- 

 witness to this deed of guilt, and whereas there are 

 five hundred pairs of rooks in these woods to every 

 pair of jays, and seeing what incorrigible egg- 

 stealers rooks become at times, it is reasonable to 

 set down the crime to the score of the ugly birds 

 rather than of the pretty ones. 



