228 
CORVIDAE. 
parts an interest. They may be watched as they scour 
the country round in search of materials for their nests, 
visiting each tree in its turn, and breaking off and re¬ 
jecting numerous branches, till the one suitable to their 
purpose is obtained. The elm, the branches of which are 
pliable and easily broken off, is their favourite tree, and 
of its twigs their nests are chiefly formed. I have many 
times watched them when overladen with too large a 
branch, after many an ineffectual struggle to reach their 
nests, borne away headlong before the wind, till at last 
compelled to let it drop. 
It is, too, an interesting sight in the neighbourhood of 
a large rookery, to watch these birds as they homeward 
wend their way in an evening after a long day's forage in 
the fields, and to mark, as I have often done, the exactitude 
with which, for a number of evenings together, they will 
keep to the self-same track, and vary that track accord¬ 
ing to the season of the year. I was led to notice this 
more particularly by being told by some friends of mine, 
who had observed them for many years, that at one sea¬ 
son of the year, the spring, the Rooks invariably make 
their homeward flight so nearly above their residence as 
to be just seen from the front windows ; and that, in the 
autumn, they always go a little behind the house. 
Amongst our farmers are to be met with some of the 
most ignorant and prejudiced of men, and to that igno¬ 
rance is to be attributed the most unjust and, to their 
own interest, detrimental persecution that the Rook has 
met with at their hands. 
That it does occasionally consume a portion of the 
grain after it is sown, there can be no doubt; but the 
injury to the forthcoming crop has been far more than 
counterbalanced by its destruction of grubs when the 
held was ploughed In one instance which I will men- 
