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sprattus) from the surface with their bills. They seemed to live 
for some time almost wholly on these fish, among which there was 
a great fatality. 
In Scotland, these birds have, by suiting themselves to circum- 
stances; come under my observation in different ways from what 
they have done in Ireland. I have for many miles along the coast 
of Ayrshire met with them in the autumn, feeding among the 
fresh sea- weed or rejectamenta of the receding tide ; and at other 
times they were crowded in search of food upon the heaps of sea- 
weed collected on the beach for manure. About two miles inland 
from Ballantrae, in Ayrshire, a few hundreds of these birds, in the 
autumn of 1839, regularly roosted on the ground upon a rising 
knoll in a pasture-field. I first saw them there at 8 o'clock, p.m., 
on the 20th of August ; and afterwards, on returning late from 
grouse-shooting in distant moors, they were always to be seen. 
This roosting-place was in the midst of a cultivated district, in 
which there was no wood of sufficient age to be patronized by the 
rook. 
At the commencement of a snow-storm in England, and 
after the ground became well covered, I was once amused at 
seeing a rook rolling in the snow, apparently enjoying itself as 
much as a Newfoundland dog could have done.*’ In summer 
I have met with the rook in Holland, Erance, and Switzerland, 
and in some parts of the first-named country have observed it to be 
as common as at its chief haunts in the British Islands. At the 
Hotel Bellevue, which is situated close to the king's park at the 
Hague, I for the first time experienced the evils of a rookery, the 
cawing from a closely adjacent one being so incessant from day- 
break, as to drive all sleep from me, unaccustomed as I was to 
such music ; — this was at the end of May, when the calls of the 
young are almost constantly uttered. 
The rook has attracted the attention of authors possessing a 
celebrity of very different kinds. In the Bracebridge Hail of 
Washington Irving, an admirable chapter is devoted to it. Gold- 
* Waterton, in his Essays on Natural History, mentions a tame raven acting 
similarly. 
