80 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
vantage, no matter how incongruous their intru- 
sion may be—on the wings of an angel, behind the 
flowing robe of St. Peter, or yonder in the niche, grey 
and lichen-grown, where stood the Virgin Mary 
before iconoclastic hands dashed her image to the 
ground. Ifa gurgoyle be broken or choked so that 
no water comes through it, they will use it, but not 
otherwise. And they have nests, too, just on the 
ledge in the thickness of the wall, outside those belfry 
windows which are partially boarded up. Anywhere, 
in short, high up and well sheltered, suits the jackdaw. 
When nesting time is over, jackdaws seem to leave 
the church and roost with the rooks; they use the 
tower much as the rooks do their hereditary group of 
trees at a distance from the wood they sleep in at 
other seasons. How came the jackdaw to make its 
nest on church towers in the first place? The bird 
has become so associated with churches that it is 
difficult to separate the two; yet it is certain that the 
bird preceded the building. Archzologists tell us 
that stone buildings of any elevation, whether for 
religious purposes or defence, were not erected till a 
comparatively late date in this island. Now, the low 
huts of primeval peoples would hardly attract the 
jackdaw. It is the argument of those who believe in 
immutable and infallible instinct that the habits of 
birds, &c., are unchangeable: the bee building a cell 
to-day exactly as it built one centuries before our era. 
Have we not here, however, a modification of habit ? 
