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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
by Sir William Northey, who colonized the place with birds 
from his estate at Epsom. A bough was cut from a tree with 
a nest containing two young rooks and taken in an open 
waggon from Epsom to the Temple, and fixed to a tree in the 
gardens. The old birds followed their young and fed them,, 
and they remained and bred there. The following year a 
magpie built her nest in the gardens : her eggs were taken 
and those of a rook substituted, and in due course were hatched 
there.* 
That magpies formerly nested in St. James’s Park we learn 
from a story which has been preserved to us from Charles the 
First’s time in connection with one of these birds. Amongst the 
numerous Frenchmen who flocked to this country in 1638 in 
the wake of Queen Henrietta Maria was a certain M. Souscar- 
riere, who although a notorious cheat and gambler, had con- 
trived to insinuate himself into good society and came to London 
to recruit the health of his purse. He brought tennis-players, 
lute-players, and singers with him, as he said, to amuse the 
natives, and ere long gained large sums of money by gambling. 
On one occasion, however, he was cleverly overreached. For a 
long time he secretly practised to throw a tennis-ball into the 
nest of a magpie in one of the trees in St. James’s Park ; and 
when he saw that he could manage it, he took a heavy bet with some 
unsuspecting gentleman that he would lodge a ball in the nest 
in a certain number of throws. Unfortunately for Souscarriere 
he had been observed practising this trick by another gentle- 
man, who, the day before the bet came off, filled the nest with 
moss, so that the ball could not roll into it, and the Frenchman 
lost his wager, to the great amusement of all who were in the 
secret.f 
The carrion crow is occasionally observed in the London parks ; 
and we have more than once seen the hooded or grey crow, in 
winter, in the Kegent’s Park — generally engaged in robbing the 
ducks of their food. On the 8th and 9th of November, 1874, 
a hooded crow was seen feeding on the lawn of the Inner Temple 
Gardens. It flew from tree to tree, occasionally dropping on to 
the grass, and was apparently not at all scared by the crowds of 
people assembled on the Thames Embankment to see the Lord 
Mayor on his return from Westminster. 
The jackdaw makes himself at home in Kensington Gardens 
and Holland Park, living in holes in some of the old trees, and 
making excursions in all directions. His presence may often 
be detected when flying homeward with the rooks by his smaller 
size and sharper cry. 
* This account was communicated to the writer by a son of the late Mr. 
Everest, who, in conjunction with Mr. Pownall, published, anonymously, in 
1825, a History of Epsom. 
t Larwood, “ London Parks,” vol. ii. p. 77. 
