Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/220

stantially what he had himself seen, and in conclusion giving it as the settled conviction of his mind that Rooks were subject to the 'falling sickness.'"

 

Few people, save lawyers and their clients, ever visit one of the quietest precincts in the city of London, viz., Gray's Inn. Turning out of noisy Holborn or Gray's Inn Lane, the most perfect stillness suddenly prevails; another city seems to have arisen; quiet alleys and paved courts shut out the noise of the busy world; a solitary footstep—made still more solitary by its echo—breaks upon the ear. Can this be in the midst of London? Even so, and in that great Square the chief noise is the "caw" of the Rooks.

In the gardens of Gray's Inn may still be seen the largest Rookery in London. How long it has been established I have not been able to ascertain. The elm trees were planted by Lord Bacon. It was probably coeval with that of the Temple, and probablv increased when the Temple Rookery was abandoned. Six years ago there were thirty-eight nests. Two years later some of the trees were blown down, others were cut down, and the Rookery was nearly annihilated; a few nests only remained on some plane trees. The Gardens having been kept very quiet, and all noisy children excluded, the Rooks are gradually returning, and this year, on April 28th, there were twenty-eight full nests with birds sitting, and four unfinished. On going round the garden I was informed that every morning one of the residents feeds the Rooks, and that often as many as eighty birds have been counted. Now as twenty-eight nests will only give fifty-six birds, the rest must come from a distance—probably the birds of a former year. Let us hope, from the care taken, that this Rookery will long flourish and increase. The gardens are beautifully clean, and the birds as glossy as if they made their nests one hundred miles from this smoky city.^[1]

For some years a pair of Rooks built their nest in the plane tree at the corner of Wood Street, Cheapside. I have notes of this in 1835, 1836, 1837, and 1838. Yarrell says that they did not use the nest after 1836, but this is a mistake. Probably these birds were the same who built their nest previously on the Dragon of

1. Some notes on the Rookery of Gray's Inn appeared in 'The Field' of the 17th and 24th April, 1875. and 26th February, 1876.—Ed.