ROOK'S DOUBLE NATURE 125 



free from anything like superstition, and yet for the 

 life of them they could not quite shake the uncanny 

 feeling off. My friend himself, when on recovering 

 he was told of these happenings, thought it all very 

 mysterious. Nor, when he consulted me about the 

 matter, as one with some knowledge of bird psycho- 

 logy, did he find my explanation quite pleasing to 

 him. He did not like to think that he had been like 

 that^ in the Lazarus state, not all of him dead but a 

 good deal of him dead, and in such a condition as 

 to excite the ravenous appetite of a crow. 



The rook, too, is in some degree a supernatural 

 or an uncanny bird, or a bird that appears to know 

 more than a bird ought to know, and he sometimes 

 behaves in a mysterious way. He is also a true crow 

 in spite of his second nature — the desire to appear 

 respectable which makes him shave his face and live 

 the social life. My friend the late H. A. Paynter of 

 Alnwick, a well-known Northumbrian and a good 

 field naturalist, gave me a striking instance of the 

 carrion crow coming out in the rook. My friend had 

 a horse which died, and wishing to preserve the hide, 

 he had the dead beast drawn up by ropes attached 

 to the hind legs and hung on the branches of a big 

 tree. In that position it was skinned and the carcass 

 left hanging to be disposed of later; but the rooks, 

 extremely abundant in the neighbourhood, were 

 quickly attracted in numbers to it, and before the 

 day was out they were in hundreds, circling like a 

 black cloud round the tree and clinging like a swarm 

 of bees to the carcass, all fighting with one another 



