managed as to be a defence against both wind and rain.

The following extract from a Letter of the Rev. Mr. J. Darwin, of Carleton
Scroop in Lincolnshire, authenticates a curious fact of this kind. "When I
mentioned to you the circumstance of crows or rooks building in the spire
of Welbourn church, you expressed a desire of being well informed of the
certainty of the fact. Welbourn is situated in the road from Grantham to
Lincoln on the Cliff row; I yesterday took a ride thither, and enquired of
the rector, Mr. Ridgehill, whether the report was true, that rooks built in
the spire of his church. He assured me it was true, and that they had done
so time immemorial, as his parishioners affirmed. There was a common
tradition, he said, that formerly a rookery in some high trees adjoined the
church yard, which being cut down (probably in the spring, the building
season), the rooks removed to the church, and built their nests on the
outside of the spire on the tops of windows, which by their projection a
little from the spire made them convenient room, but that they built also
on the inside. I saw two nests made with sticks on the outside, and in the
spires, and Mr. Ridgehill said there were always a great many.

"I spent the day with Mr. Wright, a clergyman, at Fulbeck, near Welbourn,
and in the afternoon Dr. Ellis of Headenham, about two miles from Welbourn,
drank tea at Mr. Wright's, who said he remembered, when Mr. Welby lived at
Welbourn, that he received a letter from an acquaintance in the west of
England, desiring an answer, whether the report of rooks building in
Welbourn church was true, as a wager was depending on that subject; to
which he returned an answer ascertaining the fact, and decided the wager."
Aug. 30, 1794.

So the jackdaw (corvus monedula) generally builds in church-steeples, or
under the roofs of high houses; but at Selbourn, in Southamptonshire, where