On this farm the rookery is at some distance in the meadows, and the rooks rarely come nearer than the field just outside the post and rails that enclose the rickyard, though they pass over constantly, flying low down without fear, unless some one chances just then to come out carrying a gun. Then they seem seized with an uncontrollable panic, and stop short in their career by a violent effort of the wings, to wheel off immediately at a tangent. Perhaps no other bird shows such evident signs of recognising a gun. Chaffinches, it must not be forgotten, frequent the rickyard in numbers. Finally come the rats. Though trapped, shot, and ferreted without mercy, the rats insist on a share of the good things going. They especially haunt the pigsties, and when the pigs are served with their food feed with them at the same trough. Those old rats that come to the farmstead are cunning fierce beasts, not to be destroyed without much difficulty. They will not step on a trap, though never so cleverly laid; they will face a ferret, unless he happens to be particularly large and determined, and bite viciously at dogs. But with all their cunning there is one simple trick which they are not up to: this is to post yourself high up above the ground, when they will not suspect your presence; a ladder is placed against a tree within easy shot of the pigsty, and the gunner, have previously arranged that everything shall be kept quiet, takes his stand on it, and from thence kills a couple perhaps at once. On looking back, it appears that the farmhouse, garden, orchard, and rickyard at Wick are constantly visited by about thirty-five wild creatures, and, in addition, five others come now and then, making a total of forty. Of these forty, twenty-six are birds, two bats, eight quadrupeds, and four reptiles. This does not include some few additional birds that only come at long intervals, nor those that simply fly overhead or are heard singing at a distance. The great meadow hedge--the highway of the birds--where it approaches the ha-ha wall of the orchard, is lovely in June with the wild roses blooming on the briars which there grow in profusion. Some of these briars stretch forth into the meadow, and then, bent down by their own weight, form an arch crowned with flowers. There is an old superstition about these arches of briar hung out along the hedgerow: magical cures of whooping-cough and some other diseases of childhood can, it is believed, be effected by passing the child at sunrise under the briar facing the rising sun.