THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 233 
they find a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are 
obliged to be noisy; their notes often repeated become signals 
or watch-words to keep them together, that they may not stray 
or lose each the other in the dark. 
The evening proceedings and manceuvres of the rooks are 
curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they 
return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and ren- 
dezvous by thousands over Selborne Down, where they wheel 
round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful manner, all 
the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing, 
which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at 
the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chid- 
ing ; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagi- 
nation, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, 
echoing woods, or the rush of the wind in tall trees, or the 
_ tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony 
is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night to 
the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember 
a little girl who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on 
such an occurrence, in the true spirit of physico-theology, that 
the rooks were saying their prayers; and yet this child was 
much too young to be aware that the Scriptures have said of 
the Deity —that “ He feedeth the ravens who call upon Him.” 
LETTER LV. 
In reading Dr. Huxham’s Odservationes de Aére, etc., written 
at Plymouth, I find by those curious and accurate remarks, 
which contain an account of the weather from the year 1727 
to the year 1748, inclusive, that though there is frequent rain, 
in that district of Devonshire, yet the quantity falling is not 
great; and that some years it has been very small: for in 1731 
