ON THE DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS. 101 
There is, then, a ruthless and indiscriminate persecution carried 
on, and a constant war waged, against the fere nature of this 
island. Gamekeepers, gardeners, farmers, schoolboys, are all 
pitted against them; while it is sad to know that, among our 
countrymen generally, there is a strongly-rooted impression that 
all are foes to the farm and the garden. True, they say ‘It is 
pleasant to hear birds sing, and to see them flying about, and there 
is no doubt they destroy grubs and insects ;” besides, ‘‘ the Robins 
covered the children in the wood with leaves.” But all these 
considerations weigh as nothing against the conviction of the 
great damage that they commit ; and, therefore, they must be put 
down as foes to the farm and garden, not recognised as at all 
necessary, but only tolerated on account of their beauty and their 
song; the idea that they are at all essenti:! to maintain the 
balance of creation, being one that scarcely enters the heads of 
half of even those who like andadmire them. Now, we will take 
up the cudgels on behalf of our feathered friends, and first of all 
let us notice the Rook. That he does some harm there is no doubt, 
but who amongst us does not? If you were to shoot a Kook in 
March or April probably you might find in his crop a few grains 
of newly-sown spring corn; but shoot one every day in the year 
and examine his crop, as is recommended by our old friend 
Gilbert White, of Selborne, and you will see that although he 
does some amount of harm at times by devouring corn and turnips, 
yet that his food consists chiefly of grubs, wireworms, cockchaffers, 
and other destructive insects. Indeed, any one possessed of 
ordinary observation can at once prove this. See an army of 
Rooks scattered over a large pasture field and working perse- 
veringly with their bills; what are they searching for and 
devouring? The grubs of the cockchaffer, which are most 
destructive to pasture lands, and occasionally will quite destroy 
a garden lawn. You may often have noticed in the Rye the 
Rooks tearing up the turf, and doing apparently a great deal of 
damage; well, they are doing all this in their search for grubs, 
and specially the larvee of the cockchaffer, which is, as I have 
said, very destructive both in its larval and perfect states. This 
was specially the case during the dry summers of 1858 and 1859; 
