294 BIRD WATCHING 



others back, would be heard directly after they had 

 flown, as well as after they had returned. Several 

 times, too, the black cloud and thunder-storm of wings 

 seemed to burst out of silence itself. I came to the 

 conclusion that a signal-note was not the explanation. 

 All I can say is, that — from what cause or actuated 

 by what impulse, I know not — some fifty to a hundred 

 rooks shot, as though they shared one soul, nine times 

 in succession, from those dark pines, circled a little 

 over the dusky moor, and then shot back into them 

 again. No one, except myself, was near. It was one 

 of those very lonely places where, at almost any time, 

 one can count upon seeing no one, and, altogether, it 

 struck me as an extraordinary phenomenon. 



" Once more, the old Greek idea of the ^m — a 

 sudden thought, sweeping through a crowd as a wind 

 sweeps through a grove of trees — seemed to me to 

 be the only view which met the facts. But what, 

 then, is the <l>rjiJ-r], and whence, or why, the impulse ? 



" All this time, I should say, though quite near, I 

 was perfectly concealed, standing against a tall pine- 

 tree, around the trunk of which I had helped to make 

 a wigwam — already partly formed — of some of its 

 own fallen and bending branches. This, with the 

 gloom of the plantation itself, and the falling night, 

 was a perfect concealment, even at a foot's pace, as 

 will shortly appear. 



" It was just after the last return of the out-shooting 

 birds that, looking up, I saw what I at first supposed 

 was they, but soon found to be another, and a very 

 much more numerous, band of rooks, who, as they 

 came up, were joined by the other ones, in the air. 

 Now, for the first time — for the cloud came up in 



