'Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
Whilst night's black agents to their prey do rouse.'
"But they sank peacefully down, and all of evil seemed to go, with their sweet, joyous, innocent, and well-loved voices."
Here is one last picture, and I would point out that, on all these three occasions, when the rooks slept in changed quarters, at a later time of the year, the way in which they approached or entered the trees, and the height at which they flew, varied, in a greater or less degree, from what it had been before.
"March 11th.—At 6.20 a small band of rooks comes flapping along in the usual jog-trot way, and enters the plantation. Some five minutes afterwards a very large number sail up, flying at a great height, and gather like a storm-cloud above it. They hang over it, then drift, circling, a little, descending gradually on outspread wings, till, when at a moderate height above the tree-tops, they begin to shoot down into them in the rapid, whizzing manner before described. But they do not all do this at the same time. It is a slow and gradual—in its first stages almost a solemn—entry, and the shooting down itself becomes, gradually, less rapid. How grand is this to witness! It is a living storm-cloud discharging its black winged rain—a simile, indeed, which can hardly fail to suggest itself, so apparent is the resemblance. At a distance, I think, the two might be really confounded. The gradual sinking of the birds, by fine gradations and almost imperceptibly, from their vast height, is more like an atmospheric than an organic phenomenon. The effect is heightened by the loneliness and utter silence, by the deepening shadows. Night sinks as
