142 A Plea for the Rooks. 



the turnips, and we hail with pleasure the arrival of the rooks, 

 which alone can arrest their dreaded progress. The services of 

 the rooks to our oak trees are positively be3'ond estimation : I do 

 believe, if it were not for this bird, all the young leaves in our 

 oaks would be consumed by the cockchafers. Whilst the ring-dove 

 is devouring the heart shoot of the rising clover, you may see the 

 rook devouring insects in the same field." 



I trust that such a host of witnesses as I have adduced, and 

 witnesses of the first order in intelligence and intimate acquaintance 

 with the subject, will not have failed to carry conviction to my 

 readers; but as facts are stubborn things, and preconceived opinions 

 are hard to eradicate, and the world is apt to accuse Ornithologists 

 of riding their hobby too hard, and concealing everything that tells 

 against their favourites, before I conclude, I will state the expe- 

 rience of practical men, who thinking to interfere with the balance 

 of powers as arranged and sustained by nature, have thus recorded 

 their failure.^ " The inhabitants of Virginia contrived to extirpate 

 the little crow from their country at an enormous expense, and 

 having done so, they would gladly have given twice as much to 

 buy back the tribe." ^ "A reward of threepence a dozen was 

 offered in New England for the purple grackle, which commits great 

 havoc among the crops, but protects so much more herbage than 

 he destroys, that the insects when he was gone caused the total 

 loss of the grass in 1749, and obliged the colonists to get hay from 

 Pensylvania, and even to import it from Great Britain. A few 

 years since an Act was passed by the Chamber of Deputies to 

 prohibit the destruction of birds in a particular district of France : 

 they had been recklessly killed off, and the harvest being swept 

 away in its first green stage by millions of hungry reapers, the 

 earth had ceased to yield its increase." ^ In our own country, on 

 Bome very large farms in Devonshire, the proprietors determined 

 a few summers ago, to try the experiment of offering a great 

 reward for the heads of rooks ; but the issue proved destructive to 



* Quarterly Keview, January, 1858, Article on " Sense of pain in Alen and 

 Animals," p. 203. 



' Stanley on Birds, i. 262, King's Narrative, ii., 217. » Yarrell, ii. p, 96. 



