194 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Alas! the Rooks and Rookeries so pleasant to old Londoners 
are gradually diminishing and disappearing, and the London Rook, 
to our grandchildren, will be a bird of the past. The cause is not 
far to seek. The extension of buildings limits their feeding ground, 
and they have farther and farther to go to seek sustenance for them- 
selves and their young. The Parks are now so cut up with walks 
and so frequented, that the birds can find but little repose and but 
scanty subsistence. When the writer first came to London the 
elms in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens were in the finest 
condition. Herds of Fallow Deer frequented the glades, and there 
was only one walk across Hyde Park from where the Marble Arch 
now stands to the Wellington Statue. All the rest was luxuriant 
grass, affording abundant food for birds and beasts. “ Tempora 
mutaniur |” * 
Beginning westward, the first Rookery to notice is that in the 
grounds of Holland House, one of the most ancient in the land. 
The trees bordering the high road were formerly covered with 
nests; now there are only four, and thirteen more in the 
avenue. In the days when Addison wrote, and in later days, 
when Sheridan, Jeffery, Byron, Brougham, Lyndhurst, Tom 
Moore, Macaulay, and a host of other wits and celebrities 
passed under that grand avenue to the splendid hospitality of 
that glorious mansion, the Rookery was in its prime. Those 
great names are reminiscences of a great time in England’s 
history, and are now of the past, and so soon will be the Rooks 
and the Rookery. 
A colony of Rooks has existed for many years in the high trees 
in the north part of Kensington Gardens. This Rookery, in 1836, 
extended from the Broad Walk near the Palace to the Serpentine, 
where it commences in the Gardens, and there must have been very 
nearly one hundred nests. The Rooks were very busy and their 
voices very merry when our present gracious Queen first saw the 
light in the south-east apartments of Kensington Palace, on May 
24th, 1819; and their descendants were as merry and as busy 
when her Majesty held her first Council on her Accession, in 
* It is perhaps not generally known that in 1533 Rooks and Crows were so 
numerous, and were thought to be so detrimental to the farmers, that an Act was 
passed for their destruction. Every hamlet was to provide “ Crow-nets” for two 
years, and the inhabitants were obliged at certain times to assemble and concert 
measures for the destruction of these birds.—Epb. 
