THE CROW.

IN young birds, the crow is to be distinguished from the rook only by the note, which is much more hoarse than that of the latter bird. In adults the difference is greater the bill of the crow being rather more convex towards the end, and the reflected bristles at the base being always perfect. Crows keep in pairs all the year, seldom congregating except to regale on some carcase, or in winter to roost. They frequently hide their food till hunger becomes pressing. The nest is composed of sticks, plastered with earth, having soft materials laid on it, and generally placed in the forked branches of

a tree.

The crow is a laborious bird; he goes to bed after the rook, and is well worthy the imitation of our young friends generally, in his keeping up a habit of early rising. Long before the rook is up, this bird is on the wing, and from the oak where he had found a dormitory, he announces, with a loud and hollow croak, the approach of man.

There is something proverbially adhesive, as Mr. Waterton says, in a bad name. Sticking-plaster is nothing to this quality: the latter is soon rubbed off, but the former may remain for years, and even for ages. So it has been with the bird called by our ancestors the carrion crow, to point out most probably the food it was supposed to like. But had it a taste of this kind, where can it be indulged? In former times it doubtless might be, but now-a-days it would look for a meal of flesh in vain. Still it bears the same name, though it searches for food in the pastures, meadows, and corn-fields, with great assiduity.

If something may be said against the crow, because he will occasionally enter a garden to make a meal, or find a dessert in that object of delight to the young, a cherrytree, or because the nuts in autumn are the fewer for his visits, let us hear both sides of the case, and remember the destruction he deals out to millions of noxious insects.

There is, however, the grave charge to be brought of greater thefts than those already noticed. "In 1815," says Mr. Waterton, "I fully satisfied myself of his inordinate partiality for young aquatic poultry. The cook had in her custody a brood of ten ducklings, which had been hatched about a fortnight. Unobserved by

anybody, I put the old duck and her young ones in a pond, nearly three hundred yards from a high fir-tree, in which a carrion crow had built its nest: it contained five young ones, almost fledged. I took my station on the bridge, about one hundred yards from the tree. Nine times the parent crows flew to the pond, and brought back a duckling each time to their young. I saved a tenth victim by timely interference. When a young brood is attacked by an enemy, the old duck does nothing to defend it. In lieu of putting herself betwixt it and danger, as the dunghill fowl would do, she opens her mouth, and starts obliquely through the water, beating it with her wings. During these useless movements, the invader secures his prey with impunity."

Mr. Waterton charges the crow's occasional plunder of a partridge egg on the game-keeper, who, in his rambles to find the nests of these birds, makes a track which will often be followed up by the cat, the fox, and the weasel; and still more, by driving the bird hastily from its nest, causing its eggs to be left uncovered. No wonder, then, that as the crow is in quest of food, it should pounce on the prey thus exposed, and carry off an egg on the point of its bill. But, in this case, is the bird to blame? It follows its instinct. We, how

ever, are in different circumstances.

There are feelings

of our nature, such as selfishness and cruelty, which are not to be cherished or exercised: here, and in all similar cases, we are to be concerned to subdue, not to follow, our natural character.

THE ROOK.

THIS well-known species of crow contents itself with feeding on the insect tribe, particularly the caterpillars of the cockchafer. It sometimes takes, however, the corn of the husbandman. At all seasons it is gregarious, resorting every spring to the same trees to breed, when the nests may be observed on the upper branches crowded one over another. When the young have taken wing, they all forsake their nest-trees, resorting to them again in October to roost; but at the approach of winter, they generally choose more sheltered places at night, in some neighbouring wood, to which they fly off together.

These birds are by no means deficient in sagacity; and hence it has been said :—

"Their dangers well the wary plunderers know,

And place a watch on some conspicuous bough."

Nor are they indifferent to the signal he gives: as soon as they hear it they take flight, and always in