268 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



make out till lately. I am assured now that it is the stone- 

 curlew {Charadrius oedicnemus). Some of them pass over 

 or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, 

 from the uplands of the hill and North field, away down 

 towards Dorton, where, among the streams and meadows, 

 they find a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night 

 are obliged to be noisy ; their notes, often repeated, become 

 signals or watchwords to keep them together, that they may 

 not stray or lose each other in the dark. 



The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are 

 curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they 

 return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and 

 rendezvous by thousands over Selborne-down, where they 

 wheel round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful 

 manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a 

 loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the 

 distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a 

 confused noise or chiding, or, rather, a pleasing murmur, 

 very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of 

 a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing 

 of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a 

 pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last 

 gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep beechen 

 woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl 

 who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an 

 occurrence, in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the 

 rooks were saying their prayers; and yet this child was 

 much too young to be aware that the Scriptures have said 

 of the Deity — that " He feedeth the ravens who call upon 

 Him.'' 



