BirdS. 431 



sit this part of Sussex. Many of these are the remains of establish- 

 ments for the smelting of native iron, before the Swedish metal came 

 into such general use ; and the name of " furnace -pond " which is 

 still applied to some of them, serves to point out their origin. They 

 are now generally used as fish-ponds, and are regularly drained after 

 an interval of a certain number of years ; carp, tench and eels are 

 found in considerable numbers, and the decayed vegetation which 

 has accumulated at the bottom in the form of mud, the result of the 

 falling of the leaf from the overhanging woods during many successive 

 seasons, is afterwards dug out and thrown up on the banks to be used 

 for agricultural purposes, and in this state the ponds are suffered to 

 remain for some time, before the water is allowed to return, and the 

 stock fish re-introduced. Then, indeed, an ample and welcome feast 

 is prepared for the carrion crow : the bottom of the pond and the 

 banks above being literally studded with the fresh-water muscle. I 

 have never observed so many carrion crows assembled together as on 

 such occasions, and the banquet lasts for several days, until nothing 

 remains but scattered heaps of empty and broken shells. 



On the approach of winter the carrion crow retires from the wooded 

 districts, and proceeds to the sea-coast, about the same time, or per- 

 haps at a somewhat later period than that at which the hooded crow 

 (Corvus Comix) arrives in this country from the north ; and the par- 

 tial distribution of these Corvidae, during this season, involving as it 

 does the local separation of the two species, appears to me to be wor- 

 thy of observation. 



A few years ago, while residing during the winter near the sea in 

 the western part of the county, I remarked that the carrion crow was 

 particularly numerous on that part of the coast, more especially in the 

 estuaries of Chichester harbour, and along the whole line of shore 

 from Selsey Bill to Bognor, while I could never detect the occurrence 

 of a single individual of the hooded crow within the same limits. 

 This struck me as the more remarkable, from having previously ob- 

 served that the latter species is exceedingly numerous during the same 

 season of the year about twenty miles to the eastward, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Shoreham and Brighton, where the carrion crow is, in 

 its turn, equally scarce. I may add that my subsequent observations 

 have proved the above remarks to be correct, as well as the testimony 

 of local observers both at Chichester and Brighton, whose attention I 

 had drawn to the subject. 



It would perhaps be difficult to discover the cause of this peculi- 

 arity in the local distribution of the two species, while impelled by 



