ON THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS. 251 
going about with guns, and some time or other during my 
morning’s visit, they think it their duty to call in, and circling 
slowly round and round above my head, ata height of not 
more than 20 yards, solemnly protest, in voices tremulous 
with emotion, against my persistent violation of what they 
consider good manners. For there is nothing in regard to 
which a Crow feels and expresses himself so strongly as in the 
matter of what he holds to be that pernicious and low habit 
of carrying a gun. 
I remember, when Brooks was rearing some young Eagles, 
he had at first occasion to shoot a good many Crows, eight or 
ten daily, to satisfy the cravings of his interesting nurselings. 
Within a week after he began this massacre of the innocents, 
let him but show his face outside his house, carrying a gun, and 
every Crow seemed to have left the country. He might peer 
and poke about, bustle up and hunt, but there was not a Crow 
to be seen. One might have fancied that he had killed off all 
the Crows of the neighbourhood. But let him issue, as on 
Sunday, without a gun, and presto! the whole place was alive 
with Crows, cursing and swearing at him in language which, 
had I understood it, would, I feel sure, have been too dreadful 
to record, and which was all the more shocking for having been 
indulged in on the Sabbath. It was no use his putting up a 
stick, and pretending that it was a gun; only the most infantile 
Crows were thus imposed upon; the great majority received 
the demonstration with derisive cheers, and renewed and 
intensified cbjurgations. 
I never kill Crows myself—I have a strong liking for them ; 
perhaps I bave some faint remembrance of the time, in long 
past zons when I was a Crow, (or what then represented a 
Crow,} myself—I have five or six pairs about my grounds, 
some of whom are quite tame; one especially who, if he be 
drinking at a sunken water barrel, distinctly declines to move 
to allow of my filling a watering pot. But thereby hangs a 
tale, for one day hearing a great splashing and running up 
to the butt, 1 found this Crow, in articulo mortis, wet through 
and fast smking. The water was low; he had fallen in, there 
was no foothold, and he was drowning. I caught hold of his 
bill, and lifting him gently out, laid him on a sunny plot 
of turf where he soon recovered. Let me do that Crow (and 
my fellowmen who are mostly equally intelligent) the justice 
to record, that, from that day forth, he has treated me with 
an uniformly pitying contempt. 
But this isa digression. I often carefully watch my Crows 
up hill as they cirele slowly round and round over head, 
tenderly admonishing me against the evil habit of carrying a gun, 
and I notice that when there is no wind, and it is quite calm, 
