BIRDS — GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 
323 
take care to rob it of the very choicest sticks of which it is 
composed. But these thefts never go unpunished, and probably, 
upon complaint being made, there is a general punishment 
inflicted. I have seen eight or ten rooks come upon such 
occasions, and, setting upon the new nest of the young couple, 
all at once tear it to pieces in a moment. 
At length, however, the young pair find the necessity of 
going more regularly to work. While one flies to fetch the 
materials, the other sits upon the tree to guard it; and thus in 
the space of three or four days, with a skirmish now and then 
between, the pair have filled up a commodious nest, composed 
of sticks without, and of fibrous roots and long grass within. 
From the instant the female begins to lay, all hostilities are at 
an end ; not one of the whole grove, that a little before treated 
her so rudely, will now venture to molest her, so that she 
brings forth her brood with perfect tranquillity. Such is the 
severity with which even native rooks are treated by each other ; 
but if a foreign rook should attempt to make himself a denizen of 
their society, he would meet with no favour, the whole grove 
would at once be up in arms against him, and expel him with- 
out mercy. 
Couch says ( 6 Illustrations of Instinct,’ p, 334 et seq .) : — * 
The wrong- doers being discovered, the punishment is ap 
propriate to the offence ; by the destruction of their dishonest 
work they are taught that they who build must find their own 
bricks or sticks, and not their neighbours’, and that if they wish 
to live in the enjoyment of the advantages of the social con- 
dition, they must endeavour to conform their actions to the 
principles of the rookery of which they have been made 
members. 
It is not known what enormities led to the institution of 
another tribunal of the same kind, called the Crow Court, but ac- 
cording to Dr. Edmonson, in his ‘ Yiew of the Shetland Islands/ 
its proceedings are as authoritative and regular, and it is remark- 
able as occurring in a species ( Corvus Cornice ) so near akin 
to the rook. The Crow Court is a sort of general assembling of 
birds who, in their usual habits, are accustomed to live in pairs, 
scattered at great distances from each other ; when they visit; 
the south or west of England, as they do in severe winters, 
they are commonly solitary. In their summer haunts in the 
Shetland Islands, numbers meet together from different points 
on a particular hill or field ; and on these occasions the assem- 
bly is not complete, and does not begin its business for a day 
or two, fill, all the deputies having arrived, a general clamour 
