Page:BirdWatchingSelous.djvu/332

294 others back, would be heard directly after they had flown, as well as after they had returned. Several times, too, the black cloud and thunder-storm of wings seemed to burst out of silence itself. I came to the conclusion that a signal-note was not the explanation. All I can say is, that—from what cause or actuated by what impulse, I know not—some fifty to a hundred rooks shot, as though they shared one soul, nine times in succession, from those dark pines, circled a little over the dusky moor, and then shot back into them again. No one, except myself, was near. It was one of those very lonely places where, at almost any time, one can count upon seeing no one, and, altogether, it struck me as an extraordinary phenomenon.

"Once more, the old Greek idea of the φημη—a sudden thought, sweeping through a crowd as a wind sweeps through a grove of trees—seemed to me to be the only view which met the facts. But what, then, is the φημη, and whence, or why, the impulse?

"All this time, I should say, though quite near, I was perfectly concealed, standing against a tall pinetree, around the trunk of which I had helped to make a wigwam—already partly formed—of some of its own fallen and bending branches. This, with the gloom of the plantation itself, and the falling night, was a perfect concealment, even at a foot's pace, as will shortly appear.

"It was just after the last return of the out-shooting birds that, looking up, I saw what I at first supposed was they, but soon found to be another, and a very much more numerous, band of rooks, who, as they came up, were joined by the other ones, in the air. Now, for the first time—for the cloud came up in