THE ROOK. 175 



as if they so felt, which in effect comes to the same thing. If 

 he will not bring out his teams, turn the soil, and expose the 

 worms and the grubs ; they caw over his fields, and make the 

 same sort of lamentation that a hungry man does when he 

 knows that there is meat in the house, but the careless ser- 

 vant has lost the key of the larder. 



But if the teams are all a-field betimes, slicing the sward or 

 the stubble, and turning up the fresh and fragrant earth to 

 be mellowed by the action of the sun, there is not a com- 

 plaining note among all the fieldward rooks. Gallantly they 

 strut and incessantly they pick up the larvae and the worms, 

 so that the returning plough cannot bury and so preserve in 

 the soil a single destructive thing. And you would think 

 that the memory of gratitude was strong in them, and that they 

 know upon whose territory they depended, when their own 

 was locked up in the snow and the frost. At that time, he 

 resorted to the shores of the sea, and fed on the pastures of 

 the gull ; and now that it is his time for superabundance, the 

 gull comes for a share, and the rook, instead of offering any 

 resistance, mixes with the stranger on the most friendly 

 terms. Even the pigeon comes from the cote or the wood, 

 and the very poultry and ducks come from the farm-yard, and 

 mingle in peace with the wild tribes, such charms has the 

 timely labouring of the ground. 



The plentiful supply of food which, in the course of a few 

 hours, the rooks obtain at this season, enables the one-half of 

 them to be always, and the greater part of them to be some- 

 times at work in the rookeries. It has been said, though 

 after a good deal of observation I cannot verify it, that the 

 strong sometimes help the weak in the construction of their 

 nests ; but it is certain that those which have been detected 

 in niching sticks from the nests of others, are punished, not 

 merely by the parties they have plundered, but by others. 

 The attachment of the pair during the nestling time is the 



