troop, and for about six weeks took up his abode on the hill. Each
morning thereafter the crows set out in three bands to forage. One
band went southeast to Ashbridge's Bay. One went north up the
Don, and one, the largest, went northwestward up the ravine. The
last, Silverspot led in person. Who led the others I never found out.

On calm mornings they flew high and straight away. But when it
was windy the band flew low, and followed the ravine for shelter.
My windows overlooked the ravine, and it was thus that in 1885 I
first noticed this old crow. I was a newcomer in the neighborhood,
but an old resident said to me then "that there old crow has been
a-flying up and down this ravine for more than twenty years." My
chances to watch were in the ravine, and Silverspot doggedly
clinging to the old route, though now it was edged with houses and
spanned by bridges, became a very familiar acquaintance. Twice
each day in March and part of April, then again in the late summer
and the fall, he passed and repassed, and gave me chances to see
his movements, and hear his orders to his bands, and so, little by
little, opened my eyes to the fact that the crows, though a litle
people, are of great wit, a race of birds with a language and a
social system that is wonderfully human in many of its chief
points, and in some is better carried out than our own.

One windy day I stood on the high bridge across the ravine, as the
old crow, heading his long, straggling troop, came flying down
homeward. Half a mile away I could hear the contented 'All's well,
come right along!' as we should say, or as he put it, and as also his
lieutenant echoed it at the rear of the band. They were flying very
low to be out of the wind, and would have to rise a little to clear
the bridge on which I was. Silverspot saw me standing there, and