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 wo^^k 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 sufliciently 
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. When 
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 way, 
for when hens turn cocks people say that they are 
known to be very unlucky ; and, if this thing is 
