Rook. 239 



planted too near the house, were blown by the March wind 

 (which is somewhat blustering on our downs) against the slates 

 of the roof of the rectory, and it was deemed advisable to cut 

 down the tree. But what was my vexation, when it fell under 

 the axe, to find a Eook's nest, containing three eggs, securely 

 fixed in the upper branches, though unseen from below, which 

 would have been the nucleus of the rookery I so much desired, 

 had I not, by my own act, unwittingly destroyed it. Now (said 

 I in despair) there can be no farther hope of a rookery here, 

 after so inauspicious a beginning : but the following season 

 either the same or another pair made their nest in a neigh- 

 bouring tree ; and so fast did they increase under my protection, 

 for I suffered no shooting of the young rooks for the first twenty- 

 five years, that I now count annually at least two hundred nests 

 all around my house. As long as the rooks confined themselves 

 to the trees on three sides of the house, the villagers merely 

 considered their advent as a proof of ordinary good fortune (just 

 as the German hails as the harbinger of prosperity the selection 

 of his house-roof for its nursery by the stork), but when they 

 occupied the trees on the fourth side, then the villagers con- 

 gratulated me warmly, and said ' it was a sign that money was 

 coming in on all sides,' for such was a very old and true saying 

 handed down from their fathers! which, however, I regret to 

 add, has not yet been verified in my case. That a rookery 

 thrives best when the young birds are annually shot is another 

 popular delusion: but as the late Mr. Sotheron Estcourt 

 remarked, nobody has yet shown such confidence in that 

 opinion as to advocate a similar experiment in a human colony ; 

 and certainly I am in a position to prove the contrary by my 

 own experience in regard to my Hooks, which are now unhappily 

 obliged to be thinned down nearly every year, as their numbers 

 are become too great for the locality. As with the raven and the 

 crow mentioned above, so there are superstitions and rhymes of 

 a like character relating to the Hook. In the north of England 

 the notion is very prevalent that when Rooks desert a rookery 

 which they have tenanted for a number of years, the coming 



