OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 307 



meet with in their passage ; but how are we to get over the 

 still greater difficulty of their revivification from their torpid 

 state % What degree of warmth in the temperature of the 

 air is necessary to produce that effect, and how it operates 

 on the functions of animal life, are questions not easily 

 answered. 



How could Mr. White suppose that Ray named this 

 species the honey buzzard, because it fed on honey, when 

 he not only named it in Latin huteo apivorics et vespivorus, 

 but expressly says that " it feeds on insects, and brings up 

 its young with the maggots or nymphs of wasps ? " 



That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, 

 flesh, sometimes feed on insects I have little doubt, and I 

 think I have observed the common buzzard, /aZco huteo, to 

 settle on the ground and pick up insects of some kind or 

 other. — Markwick. 



ROOKS. 



Rooks are continually fighting, and pulling each other's 

 nests to pieces : these proceedings are inconsistent with living 

 in such close community. And yet if a pair offer to build 

 on a single tree, the nest is plundered and demolished at 

 once. Some rooks roost on their nest trees. The twi«xs 

 which the rooks drop in building supply the poor with 

 brushwood to light their fires. Some unhappy pairs are 

 not permitted to finish any nest till the rest have completed 

 their building. As soon as they get a few sticks together, 

 a party comes and demolishes the whole. As soon as rooks 

 have finished their nests, and before they lay, the cocks 

 begin to feed the hens, who receive their bounty with a 

 fondling tremulous voice and fluttering wings, and all the 

 little blandishments that are expressed by the young, while 



