290 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
seems reasonable to suppose that in one way or 
another the regular flight of the second army of 
rooks passing down into this district was originally 
attracted by the trees. Three suggestions arise out 
of the circumstances. 
The wood in which both streams of rooks roost at 
night stands on the last slope of the downs ; behind 
it to the south extend the hills, and the open tilled 
upland plains ; below it northwards are the meadows. 
It has, therefore, muich the appearance of the last 
surviving remnant of the ancient forest. There has 
been a wood there time out of mind: there are 
references to the woods of the locality dating from 
the sixteenth century. Now if we suppose (and such 
seems to have been really the case) the unenclosed 
woodlands below gradually cleared of trees—thereby 
doubtless destroying many rookeries—the rooks 
driven away would naturally take refuge in the wood 
remaining. There the enclosure protected them, and 
there the trees, being seldom or never cut down, or if 
cut down felled with judgment and with a view to 
future timber, grew to great size and in such large 
groups as they prefer. But as birds are creatures of 
habit, their descendants in the fiftieth generation 
would still revisit the old places in the meadows. 
Secondly, although so many successive ‘throws’ 
of timber thinned out the trees, yet there may still be 
found more groups and rows of elms and oak in this 
direction than in any other; that is, a line drawn 
