London Birds. 171 



gunpowder they are familiar with is the occasional curl of smoke 

 from a volunteer review, and to traps and gins and poison, 

 aye, to persecution of every kind, they are happy strangers, 

 held in a kind of sanctity, as precious living relics within the 

 town of the glorious world of greenness that lies beyond. 

 The rookery in Holland Park, Kensington, one of the most 

 ancient in the land, is still in fine feather, and the clamour 

 there is just now being renewed, and the air resounds the 

 whole day long with the harsh ' ' caw, caw/' that tells unmis- 

 takeably of their anti-malthusian propensities. In that de- 

 lightful collection of personal reminiscences, London Scenes 

 and London People, by " Aleph," there are some amusing 

 anecdotes of rooks and rookeries in London. We are told of 

 the ' ' famous rookery in Carlton House Gardens ; but when, in 

 1827, the trees were cut down, the rooks emigrated to a plan- 

 tation at the back of New Street, Spring Gardens. * * * 

 There is a rookery near Kensington Palace. Taking a long 

 stride into the heart of the City, we find a rookery in the south 

 burial-ground of St. Dunstan's in the Bast, Tower Street. 

 Before the old church was pulled down, there were at least 

 twenty nests ; and the kindly parish officers annually supplied 

 them with osier twigs and other necessaries for constructing 

 their homes. When the church was removed, in 1817, the 

 disturbed rooks tool? refuge at the Tower of London, and 

 rather ambitiously built in the White Tower ;* yet they were 

 unable to reconcile themselves to the change ; and no sooner 

 had the workmen left their former haunt, than they returned 

 to their ancient quarters. In 1849 the kindness of the autho- 

 rities was again extended to them, their nest-making being 

 aided by Mr. Crutchley, the assistant overseer. They built in 

 some venerable plane trees." It is rather odd that the author 

 of London Scenes should know of the rookery that once 

 existed in the large elm trees behind the Ecclesiastical Court, 

 Doctors' Commons, and yet not know of the last chapter of 

 its history. A mischievous fellow living in a ten-pair back 

 overlooking the rookery, furnished himself with. an air-gun, 

 and from time to time popped off the rooks with noiseless 

 missiles. In another ten-pair back dwelt an observant philo- 

 sopher, whose curiosity was awakened by seeing the rooks fall 

 from time to time without visible or audible cause. That ob- 

 servant philosopher communicated to the Koyal Society that 

 rooks were subject to the falling sickness, and to this disease, 

 of which the air-gun was the unknown predisposing cause, is 

 to be attributed the extermination of the rooks that made a 

 clerical " caw" from their clerical throats in that sanctuary of 



* Which belies the remark of mine just above, that M No one ever saw rooks 

 build on housetops." 



