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this chapter I will give a few scenes from rook life, as I have watched it from late autumn to early spring, linking them together by a remark now and again of a general nature, or, possibly, some theory which my observations may have suggested to me, and seemed to illustrate. Were I to put into general terms what I have jotted down at all times and in all places, in the darkness before morning when the rookery slept about me, in the dim dawn whilst it woke into life, to stream forth, later, on wings of joy and sound, in the long day by field and moor and waste, and at evening again, or night, when the birds swept home and sank to sleep amidst their own sinking lullaby, I might make a smoother narrative, but the picture would be gone. I think it better, therefore, to make a preliminary general apology for all roughnesses and repetitions, triviality of matter,