SPORT IN BUTE. 195 



on her eggs, tore off one of her wings, and all the pirates dis- 

 appeared as suddenly as they came, and never revisited the 

 place except, indeed, one solitary spy, which flew round and 

 round the house the morning after the massacre, making a 

 great noise. The butler picked up the slain rook and the 

 female's wing, while the family watched with wonder the 

 storming of the nest and the double murder. 



A gentleman living in Newbattle Terrace, at the south side 

 of Edinburgh, told me a curious rook anecdote. Being un- 

 willing to allow a colony from a neighbouring rook settlement 

 to take possession of the old trees around his house, he shot 

 the female of the first couple that built a nest on them. The 

 widower paired again directly, and brought the new mate to 

 the same house, when she shared the fate of the first. The 

 determined settler immediately took to himself a third partner, 

 and installed her into the fatal lodging. After her death the 

 rooks assembled in a body, and tore down the nest. My 

 authority for these facts is unimpeachable, and at the service 

 of any one who thinks it worth while to demand it. 



It may be from their uniform black inviting attention, but 

 no birds show the Albino stain more frequently than black- 

 birds or rooks. I have seen these opposite " extremes " of 

 colour " meet " in the rook almost every season. I shot a 

 young one in the rookery at Kames with a white bill, another 

 with white nails to its toes ; a third had white wings, the 

 most common phase of this lusus naturce. The contradiction 

 of a whole nest of white blackbirds, and another of white 

 rooks, in both cases the parents being black, was the most 

 unaccountable freak that nature could possibly play. 1 



1 A notice of a white sparrow in the ' Scotsman ' gave rise to this reply : 



" KAMES CASTLE, Oct. 10, 1865. 



" SIB, The white sparrow of Leith "Walk is not the rara avis the correspon- 

 dents of the ' Scotsman ' suppose. 



" I have one in my collection at 1 Royal Terrace, shot by my son in the barrack 

 square of Dundalk. In the same case is another with white wings, shot by my- 

 self at a farm-steading near Joppa. Another buff sparrow haunts the village of 



