124 NATURAL HISTORY 



obliged to be noisy ; their notes often re- 

 peated become signals or watch words to 

 keep them together, that they may not stray 

 or lose each other in the dark. 



The evening proceedings and manoeuvres . 

 of the rooks are curious and amusing in 

 the Autumn. Just before dusk they return 

 in long strings from the foraging of the 

 day, and rendezvous by thousands over 

 Selhorne-down^ where they wheel round in 

 the air, and sport and dive in a playful 

 manner, all the while exerting their voices, 

 and making a loud cawing, which, being 

 blended and softened by the distance that 

 we at the village are below them, becomes 

 a confused noise or chiding ; or rather a 

 pleasing murmur, very engaging to the 

 imagination, and not unlike the cry of a 

 pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, 

 or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or 

 the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly 

 shore. When this ceremony is over, with 

 the last gleam of day, they retire for the 

 night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted 

 and Ropley, We remember a little girl who. 



