82 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
among their neighbours. Why, then, were the 
robbers not attacked, and seeing that they waited 
their time and went quietly and recovered their 
own, why all that preliminary fuss? It sometimes 
happens, we know, that the entire rookery becomes 
infuriated against a particular pair; that in such 
cases they fall upon and demolish the nest, and in 
extreme cases expel the offenders from the rookery. 
I take it that such attacks are made only on the in- 
corrigible ones, those that obtain all their materials 
by thieving, and so make themselves a nuisance to 
the community. It seems probable that in this 
instance the colony, although excited at the news 
of the robbery and the outcry made by the 
victimised pair, declined to take too serious a view 
of the matter, and after some discussion and 
quarrelling left the angry couple to manage their 
own affairs. We may think, too, that in a majority 
of cases an occasional offence is condoned among 
birds that have a social law but do not observe it 
very strictly. Thus, at home, the rook is a stealer 
of sticks when the occasion offers, and a wooer of 
his neighbour’s wife when his neighbour is out of 
the way. Too severe a code would not do; it 
would, in fact, upset the whole community, and 
rooks would have to go and live like carrion crows, 
each pair by itself. At all events, in this instance 
we see that only after the angry outcry made by 
the victims had failed to bring about an attack 
they quietly waited their opportunity to recover 
their property. Then the meek way in which the 
