296 
NATUBAL HISTORY 
make out till lately. I am assured now that it is the stone- 
curlew {Charadrius oedicnemus) / Some of them pass over 
or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from 
the uplands of the hill and North Field, away down towards 
Dorton, where, among the streams and meadows, they find 
a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are obliged 
to be noisy ; their notes often repeated become signals or 
watch-words to keep them together, that they may not stray 
or lose each the 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 Selborne 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 beecnf ti 
woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl 
who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an 
occurrence, in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the 
rooks were saying their prayers ; and yet this child was much 
too young to be aware that the Scriptures have said of the 
Deity — that he feedeth the ravens who call upon Him.^' 
(Edicnemus crepitans^ Temminck. — Eb. 
