Mr. W. Thompson on the Birds of Ireland. 487 



The only good here attributed to them is in " picking the grubs off 

 lay ground, when broken up and harrowed." That where very nu- 

 merous they do much of the harm here alleged is undoubted ; but to 

 prove that they do much more good than is imagined, I requested to 

 be allowed to examine any slaughtered birds, that by exhibiting the 

 food they contained, my friend might be convinced of the evil of his 

 ways in destroying them ; but though promised they were never 

 sent. The propriety of having boys to guard the lately-sown wheat 

 under the circumstances mentioned, where the depredations are per- 

 haps the most serious, was suggested, but the very early hour was 

 said to be an insuperable obstacle. They could however be watched* 

 and frightened away by boys at this time, and when the grain is 

 lodged, at a trifling expense, and then very little harm indeed would 

 be done by them. One of the inimitable tail-pieces to Bewick's Birds 

 (ed. 1832, vol. i. p. 93) points to the inutility of one kind of scarecrow, 

 where a rook is represented peering curiously, but without the least 

 fear, at the wretched effigy of humanity erected to frighten the spe- 

 cies from its vicinity. Every person may have observed similar in- 

 stances. The most notable that has come under my own observa- 

 tion, was where, in a newly-planted potatoe-field, a host of these 

 birds were feeding, while among them hung four of their brethren 

 gibbeted, and looking so fresh, that they had apparently been killed 

 only two or three days beforef. 



By Wm. Sinclaire, Esq., of Milltown, near Belfast, I am in- 

 formed, that towards the end of autumn, when the harvest has been 

 gathered in, numbers of rooks have, for the last dozen years or more, 

 come every morning, for about a fortnight, to the pine-trees (Pinus 

 sylvestris) in that district, for the sake of the cones, which they 

 pluck from the branches and carry away. When the cones cannot be 

 detached in the ordinary manner, they seize them in their bills, and 

 launch off from the branch into the air, that the weight of their bodies 

 may detach them. This is their common procedure with unyielding 

 cones, and has been witnessed with much interest from the windows 

 of my friend's house, within a few yards of which are some pines, 

 in which this ingenious feat is regularly practised. The rook being 

 an especial favourite with me on account of the benefit it does man- 

 kind, I was much gratified to learn this proof of its intelligence, 

 which raises it to an equality with the gray crow (as evinced by its 

 rising into the air with shell-fish and dropping them on the rocks to 

 break them), and proves it to be not unworthy, on the score of in- 

 tellect, of being placed in the same family group with the raven. 

 What they do with the cones has not been ascertained. It would 

 seem to me, that unless the scales of the cone be so widely open that 



* In his 'Familiar History of Birds/ the Bishop of Norwich fairly weighs 

 the good and harm done by rooks, and is convinced that the former greatly 

 preponderates. He suggests this watching, as Sir Wm. Jardine, likewise, 

 has subsequently done. 



f A friend who kept three eagles procured rooks enough on which to 

 feed them in summer, as these birds came to regale themselves at the troughs 

 containing pig's-meat, of which potatoes formed the principal part. 



