build sensibly. I want somebody to speak to them to whom they will pay attention. You can hear them in the evening, discussing the matter of this surplus stock. “Don’t you work any more,” he says, as he comes up with the last load, “you’ll tire yourself.” “Well, I am feeling a bit done up,” she answers, as she hops out of the nest and straightens her back. “You’re a bit peckish, too, I expect,” he adds sympathetically. “I know I am. We will have a scratch down, and be off.” “What about all this stuff?” she asks, while titivating herself; “we’d better not leave it about, it looks so untidy.” “Oh, we’ll soon get rid of that,” he answers. “I’ll have that down in a jiffy.” To help him, she seizes a stick and is about to drop it. He darts forward and snatches it from her. “Don’t you waste that one,” he cries, “that’s a rare one, that is. You see me hit the old man with it.” And he does. What the gardener says, I will leave you to imagine. Judged from its structure, the rook family is supposed to come next in intelligence to man himself. Judging from the intelligence displayed by members of certain human families with whom I have come in contact, I can quite believe it. That rooks talk I am positive. No one can spend half-an-hour watching a rookery without being convinced of this. Whether the talk be always wise and witty, I am not prepared to maintain; but that there is a good deal of it is certain. A young French gentleman of my acquaintance, who visited England to study the language, told me that the impression made upon him by his first social evening in London was that of a parrot-house. Later on, when he came to comprehend, he, of course, recognized the brilliancy and depth of the average London drawing-room talk; but that is how, not comprehending, it impressed him at first. Listening to the riot of a rookery is much the same experience. The conversation to us sounds meaningless; the rooks themselves would probably describe it as sparkling.