“In the same class, too, we must place the mantled daw, so called from the sort of grayish-white cloak that reaches from the shoulders to the tail both in front and on the back. The rest of the plumage is black, with glints of blue, like the raven’s. This bird comes to us toward the end of autumn, joins the company of black crows and rooks, and may be seen searching our fields for larvæ and sprouting grain. On the seashore, where its numbers are much greater than in the interior, it lives on fish and mollusks cast up by the waves or left by fishermen. Only under dire necessity will it touch carrion, the favorite food of the black crow and the raven. In March the mantled daw leaves us, to go and breed in the North. “The rook, which is a little smaller than the black crow, has the latter’s plumage, but with more of a violet and coppery luster. Its beak, too, is more nearly straight and has a sharper tip. It is readily distinguished from the crow and the raven by the characteristic mark of its occupation, the skin of its forehead and around the beak being bare of feathers and looking white and powdery, like a scar. Is the bird born like that? Not at all. Just as a workman handling rough and heavy objects makes his hands callous, so the rook acquires by its work the rough and scaly skin so noticeable on its forehead. It is a tireless digger and its beak is its pick, which it thrusts into the ground as deeply as it can. From constant friction with the soil the forehead and the base of the beak lose their feathers and become bald, or even have the skin itself worn away so as to leave a rough scar. The rook’s object in this toilsome operation is to capture white worms and all the destructive larvæ that are such a scourge to our cultivated fields. I saw some rooks one day hard at work in a waste tract of land, lifting up and turning over the stones scattered here and there. So eager were they that they sometimes threw the smaller stones as high as a man’s head. Now guess what they were looking for so busily. They were looking for insects and all sorts of vermin. In this work of turning over stones and digging in the soil rooks cannot fail to injure their tool, the beak, and they must rub the feathers off from its base. “I should have a high opinion of these birds if they contented themselves with hunting insects; but unfortunately they have a decided fondness for sprouting seeds, a dainty dish that they exert all their ingenuity to procure. It is said that they bury acorns and leave them in the ground until they begin to sprout and have lost their bitter taste, when they dig them up and eat them.” “What a bright idea!” Emile exclaimed. “The hard, bitter acorn is buried in the ground to get mellow, and when the rook thinks it has stayed there just long enough he has so good a memory he can go and find it again and dig it up. By that time it is just right to eat, soft and sweet and a fine feast for Mr. Rook.”