H4 THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME. 



wind turns to east or north, the rooks perch on the oaks 

 in the hedgerows in the middle of the day, puffing out 

 their feathers and seeming to abandon all search for food, 

 as if seized with uncontrollable melancholy. Hardy as 

 these birds are, a long frost kills them in numbers, 

 principally by slow starvation. They die during the 

 night, dropping suddenly from their roosting-place on the 

 highest boughs of the great beech-trees, with a thud 

 distinctly heard in the silence of the woods. The leaves 

 of the beech decay so gradually as to lie in heaps beneath 

 for months, filling up the hollows, so that an unwary 

 passer-by may plunge knee-deep in leaves. Rooks when 

 feeding usually cross the field facing the wind, perhaps to 

 prevent the ruffling of their feathers. 



Wood-pigeons have apparently much increased in 

 numbers of recent years ; they frequent sheltered spots 

 where the bushes diminish the severity of the frost. 

 Sometimes on the hills at a lonely farmhouse, where the 

 bailiff has a long-barrelled ancient fowling-piece, he will 

 lay a train of grain for them, and with a double charge of 

 shot, kill many at a time. 



Men have boasted of shooting twenty at once. But 

 with an ordinary gun it is not credible ; and the statement, 

 without wilful exaggeration, may arise from confusion in 

 counting, for it is a fact that some of the older uneducated 

 country labourers cannot reckon correctly. It is not un- 

 usual in parishes to hear of a cottage woman who has had 



