328 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
instantly despatched it, literally pulling it to pieces, amidst a 
general tumult. Dr. Wood was unable to say whether the victim, 
upon which judgment was summarily dealt, had been previously 
injured, or was otherwise imperfect.” With a diseased pity for 
evil-doers who incur severe penalties, our soul goes out to that 
Rook. 
There are many other interesting observations and facts in 
avian life to be found in this small volume. A Cuckoo was found 
a& prisoner in a Redbreast’s nest at Ackworth Court, the nest 
being so encompassed by ivy-growth as to make it necessary to 
cut away the stems in order to liberate the mighty fledgling. The 
importance of a Heron to a Trout-stream is amply verified by the 
statement that “out of the gullet of a Heron, shot at Ackworth 
in 1890, fell three Trout, each of about half a pound in weight.” 
This list appears to have been made with care, and is much more 
than a mere inventory. 
A Pictorial and Descriptive Guide to the Lake District. 
Ward, Lock & Co. Limited. 
ALTHOUGH not announced on the title-page, this ‘ Guide’ has 
been edited and largely written by Mr. G. W. Murdoch, who 
conducts the natural history columns of the ‘ Yorkshire Weekly 
Post.’ Besides its natural beauty, Lakeland will ever remain 
classic with the name of Wordsworth, while De Quincey first 
drew attention to the evidences of a prolonged Norse or, as he 
expressed it, Danish occupation of the district. The poet Gray 
is generally credited with having ‘‘ discovered” the Lake District, 
which he visited in 1769, and described in his ‘Tour in the 
Lakes ;’. but, as Mr. Murdoch observes in his introduction, “ it 
was neither industrial progress nor Gray the poet that ‘ opened 
up’ the Lake District, but Wordsworth, Southey, the Coleridges 
(father and son), Wilson (‘ Christopher North’), De Quincey, 
and afterwards Mrs. Hemans, Harriet Martineau, Dr. Arnold (of 
Rugby), James Spedding, and (in many ways one of the most 
charming of all that brilliant intellectual galaxy) the gifted 
Dorothy Wordsworth.” 
We are not, however, principally concerned with literature— 
in its restricted meaning—in these pages, nor with Border raids 
