314 CORVIDiE. 



new nest was then commenced, contiguous to, but not at the same 

 place as the former one. The twice-married crows and magpies 

 here, always proved too wary to be shot. 



Mr. Yarrell observes, that " more than two are seldom seen 

 associated together, except when food is to be obtained." But at 

 all seasons of the year, I have seen them, occasionally to the num- 

 ber of fifteen, associating together in little troops on the shore 

 of Belfast bay, when there was no apparent cause for their meeting ; 

 and when there has been such in the inland neighbourhood, so many 

 as seventeen have been reckoned on a single tree. In a rabbit 

 warren, at the wild peninsula of the Horn, in the north-west of 

 the county of Donegal, I once, on the 27th of June, saw forty 

 of these birds in a dense flock. They cannot, like jackdaws, be 

 considered as native inhabitants of large towns, but on the 3rd of 

 April, and several previous mornings, some years ago, seven or 

 eight of them frequented an old garden in the town of Belfast : 

 one or two were occasionally to be seen perched on the back 

 of a cow kept there. A gentleman living at Springvale, had a 

 pet grey crow which followed him about the place, and when not 

 so engaged, went sometimes to feed with its brethren on the 

 shore. When whistled for, it hurried back to its master. 



In the middle of May, I met with this species about the Valley 

 of Sweet Waters, near Coustantinople, and, at the beginning of 

 June, in the islands of Delos and Paros. 



THE EOOK. 



Corvus frugilegus, Linn. 



Is as common throughout the cultivated and wooded 

 parts of Ireland, as in any other country. 



This bird is generally looked upon by the farmer as an arch enemy, 

 of whose deeds he has ocular demonstration, — the evil that it 

 does being apparent in the headless stalks of grain, while its 

 virtues do not in a direct manner come under his cognizance. 

 The rook has always seemed to me a bird intended by its Creator 

 to check the undue increase of insects most injurious to the vege- 



