A Stone Table. 81 
The jackdaw could not have originally built in 
tall stone buildings. Localising the question to this 
country, may we not almost fix the date when the 
jackdaw began to use the church, or the battlements 
of the tower, by marking the time of their first 
erection? The jackdaw was clever enough, and had 
reason sufficient to enable him to see how these high, 
isolated positions suited his peculiar habits; and Iam 
bold enough to think that if the bee could be shown 
a better mode of building her comb, she would in 
time come to use it. 
In the churchyard, not far from the foot of the 
tower where the jackdaws are so busy, stands a great 
square tomb, built of four slabs of stone on edge and 
a broader one laid on the top. The inscription is 
barely legible, worn away by the ironshod heels of 
generations of ploughboys kicking against it in their 
rude play, and where they have not chipped it, filled 
with lichen. The sexton says that this tomb in the 
olden days was used as the pay-table upon which the 
poor received their weekly dole. His father told him 
that he had himself stood there hungry, with the rest 
—-not broken-down cripples and widows, but strong, 
hale men, waiting till the loaves were placed upon 
the broad slab, so that the living were fed literally 
over the grave of the dead. 
The farmers met every now and then in the 
vestry and arranged how many men each would find 
work for—or rather partial work—so that the amount 
G 
