The Booh in a Court of Laiv. 93 



various artifices have been resorted to as attractions. It 

 is not of these I intend speaking now, but to relate an 

 anecdote furnished me by my friend W. Baker, Esq., 

 of Lincoln's Inn, showing the Rook in a court of law, into 

 which it was unwittingly dragged, as many of the human 

 kind often are unwillingly. The Probate Court it was, 

 the episode occurring in Ireland — Tipperary, too — where 

 resided Mr. C, an old gentleman of large estates and 

 noted eccentricity in his habits. Having a small rookery 

 by his house, and wanting to enlarge it, by way of en- 

 couraging more birds to build, he had bundles of sticks 

 cut into convenient lengths and laid in litter all round 

 the place ; which the Rooks, as is their wont, made free 

 use of. But another eccentricity of Mr. C, which in the 

 end proved less innocuous, was a mania for making wills. 

 Many made he, year after year ; so many and so varied 

 in their conditions, as also the beneficiaries they referred 

 to, that when he at length took departure from the world 

 the difficulty was to determine which will was the latest 

 made and legally valid one. As the natural consequence, 

 there was dispute between several claimants, resulting in 

 an expensive lawsuit of long continuance, epitome of 

 which I give in Mr. Baker's own words, quoted from a 

 letter lately received from him. 



"When Mr. 0. died, there was a lawsuit about his 

 estate. Lord Longford v. Purdon was the name of the 

 action, and I think it was compromised last year. One 

 of the pieces of evidence produced to show that he (Mr. 

 C.) was of unsound mind, was the fact that he assisted 

 Ms Rooks to build their nests ! My attention had been 

 called to the case in a marked way, owing to the fact 

 that in one will (unfortunately not the right one) he had 

 named some connections of mine as legatees." 



