142 Short Communications : — 



number, dark-brown ; rump, dusky ferruginous ; the outer 

 shafts of the first four primaries, brown ; inner shafts, dirty 

 white ; remaining primaries, white ; the outer shafts tipped 

 with dark brown ; secondaries, white tipped with dark brown ; 

 greater wing coverts dark olive-brown ; lesser wing coverts, 

 light ferruginous; irides, yellow; bill and feet, dark lead- 

 grey : in shape and size closely resembles the Garganey duck 

 (^ v nas Querquedula L.). The female is somewhat smaller 

 than the male, and her plumage is of a duller cast. — Perceval 

 Hunter. Oxford, July 2. 1832. 



Services of the Rook (Corvus frugilegus L.) to Man, and a 

 Notice of the Prejudice prevailing against it. — A strong pre- 

 judice is felt by many persons against rooks, on account of 

 their destroying grain and potatoes ; and so far is this carried, 

 that I know persons who offer a reward for every rook that 

 is killed on their land ; yet so mistaken do I deem them, as 

 to consider that no living creature is so serviceable to the 

 farmer, except the live stock he keeps on his farm, as the 

 rook. In the neighbourhood of my native place is a 

 rookery belonging to Wm. Vavasour, Esq., of Weston, in 

 Wharfdale, in which it is estimated there are ten thousand 

 rooks, that lib. of food a week is a very moderate allowance 

 for each bird, and that nine tenths of their food consist of 

 worms, insects, and their larvae ; for, although they do con- 

 siderable damage to the fields for a few weeks in seedtime 

 and a few weeks in harvest, particularly in backward seasons, 

 yet a very large proportion of their food, even at these 

 seasons, consists of insects and worms, which (if we except a 

 few acorns [and walnuts] in autumn) form at all other times 

 the whole of their subsistence. Here, then, if my data be 

 correct, there is the enormous quantity of 468,000lbs., or 209 

 tons, of worms, insects, and their larvae destroyed by the 

 birds of a single rookery ; and to every one who knows how 

 very destructive to vegetation are the larvae of the tribes of 

 insects (as well as worms) fed upon by rooks, some slight idea 

 may be formed of the devastation which rooks are the means 

 of preventing. I have understood that in Suffolk, and in 

 some of the southern counties, the larvae of the cockchafer 

 are so exceedingly abundant that the crops of corn are 

 almost destroyed by them, and that their ravages do not 

 cease even when they have attained to a winged state. 

 Various plans have been proposed to put a stop to their 

 depredations ; but I have little doubt that their abundance is 

 to be attributed to the scarcity of rooks, as I have some- 

 where seen an account that rooks in those counties (I have 

 not been in them) are not numerous, either from the trees 



