10 COEYIDJE.

Crows with sticks and feathers in their mouths are flying about
all day.

"Dec. 5, 1878. Aroli.—Eound a nest with a Crow sitting in it;
no one to climb the tree."

Mr. Benjamin Aitken has favoured me with the following in-
teresting note:—"I send you an account of a nest of the Common
Crow, found in October, 1874, in the town of Madras. My
attention was first directed to the remarkable pair of Crows to
which the nest belonged, in the end of July, when they were
determinedly and industriously attempting to fix a nest on the top
ledge of a pillar in the verandah of the ' Madras Mail' office. The
ledge was so narrow that one would have thought the Sparrow
alone of all known birds would have selected it for a site; and
even the Sparrow only under the condition of a writing or toilet-
table being underneath to catch the lime, sticks, straws, rags,
feathers, and other innumerable materials that commonly strew
the ground below a Sparrow's nest. I was told that the Crows
had been at their task for two months before I saw them, and I
then watched them till nearly the end of October. The celebrated
spider that taught King Bruce a lesson in patience was eager and
fitful compared with this pair of Crows. I kept no account of the
number of times their structure was blown down, only to be
immediately begun again ; but as there was a good deal of rain and
wind at that season, in addition to the regular sea-breeze, it was a
common thing for the sticks to be cleared off day after clay. But
perseverance will often achieve seeming impossibilities, and, more-
over, the Crows worked more indefatigably as the season went on,
and used to run up their nest with great rapidity (no doubt, also,
they improved by their practice); so that several times the -struc-
ture was completed, or nearly completed, before being swept to the
ground, though how it remained in its place for a moment seems a
mystery; and twice I saw a broken egg among the scattered
debris. At length, about the middle of September, the Crows de-
termined to try the pillar at the other end of the verandah. By
this time, of course, all the Crows in Madras had long brought up
their broods and sent them adrift; and what they thought to see
an eccentric pair of their own species forsaking society, and building
in September, may be imagined. The new site selected differed in
no respect from the old one, and was no less exposed to the wind;
but the birds had grown expert at building ' castles in the air/ and
now met with fewer mishaps. In the first week of October the
hen. bird was sitting regularly, so on the 8th of the month I sent
a man up by a ladder, and he held up four eggs for me to look at.
It fairly seemed after this that patience was to have its reward,
but on the night of the 20th there came a storm of wind and rain,
and when I went to the office in the morning, the nest was lying
on the ground, with two young Crows in it, with the feathers just
beginning to appear. The other two, I suppose, had fallen over
into the street. And thus ended one of the most persevering-
attempts on record to overcome a difficulty insurmountable from