_Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--In the year 1816, a Scotch newspaper states
that a common crow, perceiving a brood of young chickens, fourteen in
number, under the care of a parent hen, picked up one of them; but a
young lady, seeing what had happened, suddenly pulled up the window,
and calling out loudly, the plunderer dropped his prey. In the course
of the day, however, the audacious and calculating robber, accompanied
by thirteen others, came to the place where the chickens were, and each
seizing one, got clearly off with the whole brood at once.
An instance of sagacity in the crow is told by Dr. Darwin. He had a
friend, on the northern coast of Ireland, who noticed above a hundred
crows at once, feeding on mussels. The plan they took to break them
was, each to lift one in its bill, and ascend about thirty or forty
yards in the air, and from thence let the mussels drop upon stones;
thus they secured the flesh of the animal inhabitants.
During the war between Augustus Caesar and Mark Antony, when the world
looked with anxiety which way Fortune would turn herself, an indigent
man in Rome, in order to be prepared to take advantage of whichever way
she might incline, determined on making a bold hit for his own
advancement; he had recourse, therefore, to the following ingenious
expedient: He applied himself to the training of two crows with such
diligence, that he taught them at length to pronounce distinctly, the
one a salutation to Caesar, and the other to Antony. When Augustus
returned conqueror, the man went out to meet him, with one of the crows
perched on his hand, which every little while exclaimed, _Salve, Caesar,
Victor, Imperator!_ Augustus, greatly struck, and delighted with so
novel a circumstance, purchased the bird of the man for a sum which
immediately raised him to opulence.
There is a kind of crow, which is seen in England in flocks, called
the _hooded_ crow. It is said that one or two hundred of them will
sometimes meet together as if upon some fixed plan; and at these times,
a few of them sit with drooping heads, and others look very grave, as
if they were judges, while others still are very bustling and noisy. In
about an hour, the meeting breaks up, when one or two are generally
found dead; and it has been supposed that this meeting is a sort of
trial of some crows who have behaved ill, and who are punished in this
severe way for their bad behavior.