136 



THE ROOK. 



the state took charge of their preservation. Laws 

 were immediately framed for their protection ; and, 

 lest the people should have a hankering for grakle 

 pie, the physicians were instructed to proclaim the 

 flesh of the grakle very unwholesome food. When- 

 ever I see a flock of rooks at work in a turnip-field, 

 which, in dry weather, is often the case, I know that 

 they have not assembled there to eat either the 

 turnips or the tops, but that they are employed in 

 picking out a grub, which has already made a lodge- 

 ment in the turnip. 



Last spring, I paid a visit, once a day, to a car- 

 rion crow's nest on the top of a fir tree. In the 

 course of the morning in which she had laid her fifth 

 egg, I took all the eggs out of the nest, and in their 

 place I put two rooks' eggs, which were within six 

 days of being hatched. The carrion crow attended 

 on the stranger eggs, just as though they had been 

 her own, and she raised the young of them with 

 parental care. When they had become sufficiently 

 large, I took them out of the nest, and carried them 

 home. One of them was sent up to the game- 

 keeper's house, with proper instructions ; the other 

 remained with me. Just at this time an old woman 

 had made me a present of a barn-door hen. " Take 

 it, sir," said she, " and welcome ; for, if it stays here 

 any longer, we shall be obliged to kill it. W^hen 

 we get up to wash in the morning, it crows like a 

 cock. All its feathers are getting like those of a 

 cock ; it is high time that it was put out of the w^ay, 

 for when hens turn cocks people say that they are 

 known to be very unlucky ; and, if this thing is 



