198 OMNI VOILE. 



of cliff ; their nests are in the most inaccessible places, and 

 the eggs are four or five in number. They eat grain, and 

 sometimes visit the fields for that purpose ; but their prin- 

 cipal food is found among the rocks and in the wilds, and it 

 consists of meat, or of seeds and berries, as may happen. It 

 is probable that they also pick some substance from the rocks, 

 because in bad weather they stay more closely there than 

 appears to be consistent with the wariness of their feeding at 

 other times! They come abroad only in fine weather, and fly 

 high on their journey, but seek their food on foot, the form of 

 their bills being well fitted for picking insects out of very 

 small crevices. It is not true that their flying far and feed- 

 ing late, in itself portends the breaking of the weather ; but 

 it proves that they have scoured all the nearer pastures, till 

 they have ceased to be very productive, which is saying, in 

 other words, that there has been a long period of dry weather, 

 the end of which must be change, more violent, and gene- 

 rally nearer in proportion, as the drought has lasted long ; and 

 as pastures do not recover their insects any more than their 

 vegetation while the drought continues, the choughs must 

 extend their journeys more and more, till the rain comes ; and 

 thus they are necessarily further from home, and later on the 

 wing, just before the weather breaks, but without any par- 

 ticular foreknowledge of the weather. 



A change which is yet to happen in the atmosphere, can no 

 more affect the present habits of a bird, than a gun which is 

 ^yet to be loaded and fired, can at present shoot a partridge ; 

 but the present state of the weather, and the past state also, 

 as being the antecedent of the present, do affect the habits of 

 birds, and to these observation can always apply, and must, 

 when rightly applied, be useful. 



Those birds which, like choughs or rooks, live in societies, 

 and go in bands to their pastures, must, in the nature of 

 things, consume the produce where they feed ; and whether 



