320 
CORVIM. 
the dead bodies, that as a matter of curiosity they were reckoned 
by some boys, as they gathered them into heaps. Dean Vignolles 
likewise submitted to Mr. Balks inspection an unusually thick 
panel of a new window shutter, which was driven in and split, 
by a rook being dashed against it, on the night in question : — • 
the innocent cause of the damage was found dead between the 
window and the shutter, inside the room. Other fatalities occa- 
sionally befall the rook. In the autumn of 1831 (?), there was a 
dense fog over Lough Neagh and its neighbourhood, for two 
nights and an entire day, during which time great numbers of 
these birds perished in its waters, and were afterwards washed 
ashore. I have been told that a similar circumstance occurred in 
the harbour of Cove, in the south of Ireland, some years ago. At 
mid-winter, I have remarked large bodies returning at roosting 
time, across the broadest portion of Belfast bay, to their rookery. 
At Bedhall, county of Antrim, a friend once saw a brood of 
four young rooks, all of which were white, though both parents 
were of the ordinary sable hue. J. V. Stewart, Esq., of Bockhill, 
near Letterkenny, possesses two varieties of the rook, one entirely 
of a dingy brown colour, and having a diseased appearance : 
the other, with two white bars across the wings, the rest of the 
plumage being of the usual colour. In the year 1839, I was told 
by Mr. G. J. Allman, that several light fawn-coloured birds of this 
species were shot near Bandon a few years previously, some of which 
he had seen in company with other rooks, that freely associated 
with them. 
Mr. Poole has kindly furnished me with a history of the rook, 
as observed by himself in the county of Wexford. The following 
passages, &c., on points not hitherto treated of, are selected from 
it : — 
“ At the commencement of our rookery, the infant colony con- 
sisted of twelve pairs, the next season the number of nests was 
forty-six, and on the third it had increased to 176 nests, thus in- 
dicating, that allowing for deaths by disease or accident, the birds 
quadruple their numbers every year. A rather curious accident 
happened in our rookery. In a quarrel between two rooks one of 
