1 44 A Plea for the Rooks. 



invariably for the sake of some description of worm which is 

 preying upon its root. The plant which he eradicates will be found 

 upon examination to be dead or dj'ing, and by devouring the cause 

 of the mischief he saves the rest of the field from blight. Unob- 

 servant persons, who never look below the surface, often mistake 

 the policeman for the thief: luckily their power to injure their 

 benefactor is not equal to their will, or they would exterminate 

 him altogether, and leave the depredators unmolested to consume 

 the whole of the crops. When an unhappy success has attended 

 efforts of this kind, we have seen that the evil consequences have 

 been signal and immediate." 



A flight of rooks then renders services which could not be 

 performed by all the cultivators of the soil put together, and if 

 the poor birds are occasionally mischievous, they 'are richly worthy 

 of their hire. Make the largest probable allowance for their 

 consumption of a portion of that crop, the whole of which they 

 preserve, and they are still immeasurably the cheapest labourers 

 employed upon a farm. Volumes would be required to tell all the 

 mistakes which are committed in the blind rage for destruction, 

 and in the readiness of the Lord of the Creation to believe that 

 everything which tastes what he tastes is a rival and a loss. 



But I do trust that that day of short-sighted ignorance is not to 

 return to Wiltshire, and that we no longer jumble in one miserable 

 confusion our friends with our foes. I trust that we have learnt to 

 know our benefactors, and if the rooks do take a little of our newly 

 sown grain, or when pinched by hard weather, if they are driven 

 by starvation to peck holes in our turnips and potatoes, let us not 

 grudge them the petty theft, but call to mind the vast benefits 

 they confer on us at other seasons, and protect them as our best 

 allies, and encourage them by every means in oar power. 



