Now, in Barker's Bible,* the passage runs thus:

v. 6. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, and he dranke of the river.

The passage, as it is now read in our churches, is nearly the same—

6. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook.

If the feeding-birds were ravens, what becomes of the bread? And, on the other hand, it may be asked, if the feeders were rooks or daws, what becomes of the flesh? though, as we shall presently see, rooks do not object to a portion of animal food, neither do daws; we know, however, of no bird likely to have administered bread and flesh in the quantities necessary for the prophet's daily supply. If we read Orebim as indicating the people of the town, all difficulty ceases; and we do not see much in the objection arising from the fear of 'Ahab. We know how the Scotch Covenanters were supported in their hiding. places, notwithstanding the severities denounced against those who harboured or assisted them. There is, perhaps, more weight in the observation grounded on the prophet's desertion of his asylum when the brook was dried up; but it must be remembered that solid food may be conveyed more secretly than water. If, however, the prophet was miraculously fed by birds, any birds may have been the agents; and it is useless to reason upon a miracle.

Belon and others are of opinion that the rook was the spermologos of Aristotle, and gives that, spermatologos, and colios as the Greek name of the bird, which is named spermologus seu frugilega by the learned Dr. Caius, and spermologus and frugivorus by Charlton. That it was the corvus of Virgil, the happy description in the first Georgic leaves no doubt ;† and there can be as little, that it was as well known

to the polite Athenians as to the stern Romans.

Pliny, in the twelfth chapter of his tenth book - De inauspicatis avibus, cornice, corvis, bubone-is eloquent upon their habits and

omens.

The crow liveth not altogether of carion, for the rooke eateth of other food. The crows and rookes have a cast by themselves: for when they meet with an hard nut which they be not able to cracke, nor breake their shales with their bills, they will flie aloft and fling it against some rock or tile house once or twice, yea, and many times together, till it be so crushed and bruised that they may easily breake it quite, and then they eat up the kernell. These birds all of them keep much pratling and are full of chat, which most men take for an unluckie sign and presage of ill fortune; although some there be who think otherwise, that it is a good bird, and highly esteem of her. Observed it is, that from the going down or occultation of the starre Arcturus, unto the comming of the swallow, the crow is not to be seene else-where but about the groves and temples of Minerva (and that is but very seldome), and namely, neere to Athens. Moreover, this bird only feedeth her yong cadowes for a good while after they are able to flie. She is most unluckie at breeding time and cooving, that is to say, after the sunsted in summer. All other birds, which be as it were of the same race, drive their yong ones out of the nest when they be once flidge, and put them to it, forcing them to flie abroad like as the ravens also, who likewise feed not on flesh only; and they likewise when they perceive their yong once to be strong, chase and drive them away farre off. Therefore about little villages and hamlets, there commonly be not above two paire of them at once.‡

Belon, who writes gracculus and frugilega as the Latin name, refers also to the twenty-ninth chapter of the same book of Pliny, where it is written :

And yet in the neighbor quarters of the Insubrians§ neer adjoyning ye shall have infinite and innumerable flocks and flights of choughes and jack-dawes, || the veriest theeves, nay the only theeves of all other birds, especially for silver and

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gold, that it is a wonder to see what meanes they will make to steale and filtch it.

The learned and scientific Frenchman gives good reason for considering Pliny's gracculi rooks, though it has pleased the worthy Philemon to make them choughes.' With regard to the theeving' propensity, the rook has the penchant for petty larceny common to all the tribe; and the 'infinite and innumerable flocks and flights' is much more applicable to rooks and their usual companions daws, than to the birds now called choughs. That part of the passage in Pliny first quoted which refers to the crow being seldom seen at a particular period, agrees with the partial migrations now observable in some countries.

'In France and Silesia these birds (rooks) are migratory in the former they appear at the approach of winter; in the latter they announce by their arrival the return of summer,' writes Pennant, on the authority of Buffon; and according to the Amanitates Academica, they arrive in the Swedish province Ostrogothland, where they were observed by Ekmarck, vergente mense regelationis, thawing month, which, in Sweden, begins on the 19th of March and ends on the 12th of April, leaving it in the autumn.

Aldrovand very summarily accuses the worthy Belon of hallucination in taking Pliny's gracculus for a rook, frugilegam, as he indignantly writes,pro gracculo pictam nobis obtrudens.' But, with all respect for the Italian, who is an excellent compiler of passages and stories, he is not to be named in comparison with the Frenchman as an observer; and notwithstanding the flippant condemnation of the latter by the former, it is pretty plain that, though Aldrovand may have read Belon's picture, he did not pay much attention to his text. The Italian also falls into the vulgar error of abuse of the rook as a pestilent enemy to farmers, and rakes up every idle story against them, going minutely into the pains and methods taken and adopted by the English and Dutch (Batavi) to

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drive them away, on account of the devastation which they occasion :

Quare memoria nostra in principium concilio sancitum est, ut ejusmodi cornices modis omnibus funditus extinguerentur, constituto etiam pretio illis, qui eas necarent.

He does not state where this council which set a price on the poor rooks' heads was held, so we conclude that the locality was Gotham.

The Knight of the Polar Star, after stating the following specific character of the rook-'corvus ater, fronte cinerascente, cauda subrotundata'-gives the bird itself a bad character with a pregnant brevity, thus-agris infesta. Now, pace tanti viri, both characters are rather hasty. This is the more remarkable, because our countryman Ray, to whom Linnæus refers, had suggested that the ash-coloured or whitish aspect of the forehead in an old rook, was owing to their rooting in the earth with their bills in search of food, by which they rub off the feathers on that part. In the edition of Willughby by the author of The Wisdom of God in the Creation, we read::

In the old ones of this sort the feathers about the root of the bill as far as the eyes are worn off, by often thrusting the bill into the ground, to fetch out earthworms, &c. So that the flesh thereabouts is bare, and appears of a whitish colour. And Pennant says:

But what chiefly distinguishes the rook from the crow is the bill; the nostrils, chin, and sides of that and the mouth being in old birds white and bared of feathers, by often thrusting the bill into the ground in search of the eruca of the don-beetle ;* the rook, then, instead of being proscribed, should be treated as the farmer's friend, as it clears his ground from caterpillars, which do incredible damage by eating the roots of the corn.

But the following instances clearly show that the ashy appearance at the base of the bill, at its sides, and on the forehead, is due to the cause mentioned by Ray and confirmed by Pennant and Brookes. In Mr. John Blackwall's highly interesting Researches in Zoology, a rook preserved in the Manchester Museum

is noticed. This bird is remarkable for a malformation of the bill, the mandibles of which are crossed near the extremities; but so slightly that the deformity could not have interfered with the usual mode of obtaining food, as is clearly manifest from the denuded state of the nostrils and of the anterior part of the head, both of which are entirely bare of feathers. In another specimen possessed by Mr. R. Wood of Manchester, the mandibles are greatly elongated, and very much curved. Upon this example Mr. Blackwall observes that it is evident that a bird with a bill thus formed could not thrust it into the ground in search of worms and larvæ of insects, as the rook is known to do habitually; and accordingly, the base of the bill of this individual, and the bristly feathers which cover its nostrils, are very conspicuous, not having sustained the slightest injury. Mr. Blackwall proceeds to remark that the opinion entertained by many persons that the naked

condition of the nostrils and anterior part of the head is an original peculiarity of the rook, is thus satisfactorily proved to be incorrect. He adds-what one should have thought obvious to any naturalist, but which evidently has been overlooked-that the fact of young rooks exhibiting no deficiency in these particulars, is sufficiently conclusive on this point.

With regard to the charge of injury to the fields, Linnæus has more support from The Ornithology of Francis Willughby, for there we read:

These birds are noisome to corn and grain so that the husbandmen are forced to employ children, with hooting and crackers, and rattles of metal, and, finally by throwing of stones, to scare them away. Such as have no servants or children to spare for such a purpose make use of other devices; either of mills made with sails, to be turned by the wind, making a continual snapping as they turn, wherewith they fright the birds, or of bugbears (or as we call them, scarecrows), placed up and down the fields, and dressed up in a country habit, which the birds taking for country

It is all very well to employ an urchin to sing

Out of my master's ground
Into Tom Tidler's ground;
Ay, I, O!

when the rooks take their toll as they will do, when the corn sprouts and when it is ripe, spite of boys and crackers and clappers and scarecrows. As for the latter, after they have been up a week, they are perfectly useless. In Gloucestershire such a figure is called a dudman (or rag-man): and we remember a case where a peripatetic beggar whose fluttering apparel was held together by pins, asked leave to change with the dudman, whose clothing was certainly the more cohesive of the two. This was granted; and when the change was effected it was found that a bird-a sparrow, if we recollect rightly-had built its nest in the depressed crown of the dud

man's hat.

Mr. Weir, whose remarks show him to be no common observer of the habits of these birds, states the case very fairly

are

:

Whether rooks (says that gentleman). more beneficial or prejudicial to mankind is matter of dispute. If they are destructive to the corn during harvest, they are undoubtedly of great use to the farmer by destroying a vast quantity of insect larvae, which, in some seasons, are extremely hurtful to the tender shoots. By these little voracious insects I have seen many an acre of excellent oats, which to the owner held out the fairest prospect of an abundant crop, rendered wholly unfit for use.

Mark that stalwart rustic whistling o'er the lea, as he strides between