88 
THE CARRION CROW. 
positive which can invalidate this assertion. Verily 
when the professor climbs up to crows' nests this 
ensuing spring, he will agree with Ovid, that "Causa 
patrocinio, non bona, pejor erit." 
The carrion crow never covers its eggs on leaving 
the nest : they are generally from three to five, and 
sometimes even six, in number ; wonderfully irre- 
gular in size and shape and colour. This irregularity 
is so very apparent, that on examining the nests of 
some carrion crows with eggs in them, you might 
fancy to yourself that the rook had been there, to 
add one of hers to those already laid by the ori- 
ginal owner. 
This bird never builds its nest in hedges, but will 
construct it in any of our forest trees ; and, with 
me, it seems to give the preference, in general, to 
the oak, the spruce fir, and the Scotch pine. The 
young are hatched naked and blind, and remain 
blind for some days. 
Our ancestors, no doubt, bestowed the epithet 
" carrion" upon this bird, in order to make a clear 
and decided distinction between it (whose flesh, they 
probably supposed, was rank and bad) and the rook, 
the flesh of which was well known to be good and 
wholesome food. Perhaps, too, in those days of 
plenty, and of less trade, the carrion crow had more 
opportunities of tasting flesh than it has in these 
our enviable times of divers kinds of improvement. 
Were a carrion crow of the present day to depend 
upon the finding of a dead cow or horse for its dinner, 
it would soon become an adept in the art of fasting 
by actual experiment ; for, no sooner is one of these 
animals, in our neighbourhood, struck by the hand 
