XV.] 
LETTEE XV. 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 
Some intelligent country-people have a notion that we have 
in these parts a S2:)ecies of the genus mustelinum , besides the 
v^easel, stoat, ferret, and polecat ; a little reddish beast, not 
much bigger than a Held mouse, but much longer, which they 
call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended 
on ; but further inquiry may be made. 
A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milk-white rooks 
in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them before they 
were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed them, to the 
regret of the owner, who would have been glad to have pre- 
served such a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds myself 
nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised to find that 
their bills, legs, feet, and claws were milk-white. 
[Kooks are continually fighting and pulling each other's nests 
to pieces: these proceedings are inconsistent with living in 
such close community. And yet if a pair offer to build on a 
single tree, the nest is plundered and demolished at once. 
Some rooks roost on their nest trees. The twigs which the 
rooks drop in building supply the poor with brushwood to light 
their fires. Some unhappy pairs are not permitted to finish 
any nest till the rest have completed their building. As soon 
as they get a few sticks together, a party comes and demolishes 
the whole. As soon as rooks have finished their nests, and 
before they lay, the cocks begin to feed the hens, who receive 
their bounty with a fondling tremulous voice and fluttering 
wings, and all the little blandishments that are expressed 
by the young while in a helpless state. This gallant deport- 
ment of the males is continued through the whole season of 
incubation. These birds do not copulate on trees, nor in their 
nests, but on the ground in the open fields.]^ 
1 After the first brood of rooks are sufficiently fledged, tliey all resort to 
isome distant place in search of food, Init return regularly every evening, in 
