XIV 

 CROWS AND GULLS 



ROOKS and gulls follow the plough 

 which is turning over the fallow. The 

 peasant looks not from his team. The 

 child, sitting on his father's jacket, 

 points not his chubby finger at one bird more 

 than the other. Even the dog troubles not to 

 chase them. Plainly the gulls are not strangers, 

 so near the inland cottage with its honey-suckled 

 doorway, and the windy elms where the rooks 

 rock of a night. 



Black and white, from sea and land, they seem 

 as unlike as birds could be, save in the common 

 appetite which draws them to the same field and 

 into one furrow. So misleading are appearances. 

 Say by some trick of harlequinade the colours 

 were suddenly transferred, so that the gulls wore 

 the sooty garb, and the crows the lighter gull 

 shades. One might rub his eyes as when some- 

 thing has happened, he cannot tell what ; and 

 after a more searching glance conclude that he is 

 under some mistake. The herring -gulls in the 

 field might pass for rooks even when a rook is 



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