THE ZOOLOGIST. 
THIRD SERIES. 
Vor. 11.) JUNE, 1878. [No. 18. 
THE ROOKS AND ROOKERIES OF LONDON, 
PAST AND PRESENT. 
By Epwarp Hamiuton, M.D., F.L.S. 
Wirt the exception of the ubiquitous House Sparrow, no birds 
frequenting our London parks and trees are so familiar to us as 
our black-coated friends the Rooks, or, as they are commonly 
but erroneously called, Crows. Winter and spring, summer and 
autumn, they may be seen stalking about searching for food, 
confident in their security, claiming friendship with man, yet 
wary withal, for they never allow too near an approach. Never 
disturbed by crow-boy or gun, their progeny protected and allowed 
to gain maturity, no rook-shooting parties to molest them, they are 
happy in the dust and turmoil of this overgrown city. 
The Rook, indeed, is to the citizen what the Nightingale is 
to the countryman—-the harbinger of spring; and there are few 
pleasanter sounds in nature than the harmonious cawing from the 
lofty elm which greets the ear at Eastertide. We never pass 
beneath a Rookery in early spring, or listen to the distant voices 
of our sable friends without being reminded of Longfellow’s lines 
in ‘The Birds of Killingworth’ :— 
“Do you ne’er think what wondrous beings these ? 
Do you ne’er think who made them and who taught 
The dialect they speak, where melodies 
Alone are the interpreters of thought? 
Whose household words are songs in many keys 
Sweeter than instrument of man e’er caught! 
Whose habitations in the tree tops even 
Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!” 
we 
Qa 
