hypocrisy added to iniquity, grew more and
more angry; and then, while making a near
swoop, was shot. But the trick which was
successful once was not successful twice, when
tried with the companion crow. Another device
was thought of. Eight large rats having been
caught in the rabbit-traps, were placed within
sight of the corby, and a large ferret was pinned
down in the cat's place. Attracted by the
chattering of the ferret unable to get at the rats, the
corby flew within range and was shot. A steel
trap baited with egg-shells, and put upon the
top of a cropped hedge close by, killed a third
corby. And thus the ash coppice was cleared
of the invading corbies; and a few days afterwards
the rooks began to return to it, only,
however, to build there four or five nests where
fifty or sixty had been.

Invasions and garottings, thefts and murders,
taking place both among birds and men, I am
happy to be able to say for rooks, crows, and
ravens, and for herons alike of the cinerous and
purple species, that, upon the whole, they earn
their living honestly. Even the skuas, I may
mention by the way, are not always garotters.
The Rev. R. N. Dennis, rector of East Blatchington,
Sussex, assures me that he has shot
both Pomarine and Richardson's skuas upon
floods, which were feeding on earthworms.
Floods upon pastures during storms drown vast
numbers of earthworms, which come up to the
surface, and the skuas feed upon them. Like
gulls, skuas throw up when wounded. Lord
Clermont confirms this observation strikingly.
On the sixth of June last, Lestris parasiticus,
the Arctic skua, was shot while following a
plough in a field five miles from Newry and
three from the coast. The skua was picking
up the worms laid bare by the plough.
Remembering that the skuas usually get their living
by garotting honest divers, it is pleasant to
know that they sometimes try what an honest
life is like.

The purple heron, the squacco heron, and the
egrets, shade off from the herons to the bitterns.
And here I may mention, that herons have been
supposed to have an odour in their legs which
attracts fish within reach of their beaks. Anglers
used to mix their fat in the pastes which they
used for baits. "And some affirm," says an
old writer, "that any bait anointed with the
marrow of the thigh-bone of a heron, is a great
temptation to any fish. The scent from his legs
was considered to be attracting to them when
he waded in the water." What the common
heron is said to do by appealing to the sense of
smell, the Canadian blue heron does by working
on the sense of sight. On the breast of this
heron, covered by the long plumage of the neck,
is a tuft of soft tumid feathers, which, when the
long neck feathers are raised, and the tuft
exposed, in the dark emits a phosphorescent light.
The fishermen aver that when wading knee-
deep in the water at night, the heron brings
the fish within his reach by showing his light,
just as the Indian does by placing his torch of
pitch-pine in the prow of his canoe. On this
principle, common to the Indian fisherman, the
salmon spearers of Scotland, the Canadian blue
heron, and many other fishers, the French
have recently invented a new method of fishing.
Kindling an electric light in the sea, the
curious fish in crowds surround it, and whilst
they are satisfying their scientific curiosity the
French fishermen extinguish the light, and in
the sudden darkness enclose them in their nets.
There is a consideration of which I submit
ravens and crows ought to have the benefit.
Mr. A. E. Knox has, in his Ornithological
Rambles in Sussex, described a raven during
long-continued frost looking the very picture of
despair, as in pensive attitude and with muffled
plumage his dusky figure may be noticed
perched on some withered bough. Then,
indeed,
               Othello's occupation's gone,
and in his hour of need he migrates to the sea
coast, where he feeds on dead fish. Mr. Wolf
has designed an illustration of this description,
and certainly Othello, with his claws embedded
in the snow and icicles, does look, from the standpoint
of a comfortable fireside, not a little
miserable. But Arctic voyagers tell us that the
raven finds a hard frost, which even those of us
who retain the keenest recollections of the
Christmas-eve of 1860 cannot imagine, to be
something enlivening and jolly. Sportsmen who
have shot ravens, crows, or rooks in hard winters,
have been astonished to find them in full flesh,
fat and plump. The Rev. Leonard Jenyns,
feeling some desire to know how rooks support
themselves during severe frost, had one of them
shot and brought to him. It was, he was
surprised to find, in most excellent condition. The
stomach and its accessories were covered with
layers of fat. All this group of birds are
omnivorous. A rook has been seen taking a fish
out of the lake in Kensington Gardens, and
devouring it upon the bank. But their special
food consists of animal remains, and this food is
most abundant in hard frosts. Cold is the
caterer of death; and death is the caterer of the
devourers of the dead. During severe weather,
innumerable animals of all kinds benumbed witli
cold fall asleep, and sleep the sleep from which
there is no waking. Birds are then found frozen
to the branches of trees, stiff and dead. I once
lived for three years with a clump of trees in a
garden just before my bedroom window, which
commanded a view enclosed only by distant
hills. During the sleepless nights of a long
illness, I learned to distinguish the notes of
between thirty and forty different species of birds,
and their different hours for beginning their
chatterings, whistlings, and warblings. In the
winter of 1853-4, when the news from the camps
in the Crimea added miserable thoughts to the
sufferings of every suffering British household,
word came to my bedside one morning, through
the pale lips of awe-stricken children and
servants, that at least a dozen birds were to be seen
upon the trees of the clump frozen and dead. On
the Christmas-eve of 1860, a cat was frozen to
death, and found next morning standing erect