CROW. 287 



may be near the surface. Were the Crow but content with 

 food of this kind it would make few enemies ; but unfortu- 

 nately for itself it has earned a reputation of being only less 

 mischievous as it is less powerful than the Raven, and, where 

 it is plentiful, its injuriousness to flock-masters cannot be 

 gainsaid. Yeaning ewes and their new-born lambs not 

 unfrequently fall victims to its attacks when removed from 

 the shepherd's care. The gamekeeper detests it even worse 

 than the Raven, for it is more abundant, and its partiality to 

 eggs, from those of an Eagle to those of a Titlark, leads it to 

 beat deliberately over moors and fields, hedgerows and borders 

 of woods, to find the nests of Grouse, Partridges and Phea- 

 sants, which it speedily empties of their contents, each egg 

 being separately carried off on the point of its bill and then 

 sucked. Nor does it shew any mercy to the tender broods, 

 and from its habit of haunting the waterside it is particu- 

 larly destructive to Ducklings. Leverets, young rabbits and 

 other small mammals it will also capture. It will snatch a 

 wounded bird almost from the grasp of the gunner, and that 

 which at nightfall he has marked as fallen dead will be found 

 by him next day with its bones picked clean. Though grain 

 is seldom touched by it, when opportunity offers it will take 

 cherries and walnuts. Thus by nearly all classes it is ranked 

 as one of the most heinous of feathered offenders. Yet 

 Waterton had a good word for it, urging that for nine or ten 

 months of the year it does very little injury to man, while 

 during the greater part of that time it is as assiduous as the 

 Rook in the consumption of noxious larvne. For this cause 

 also, Vieillot reckons it among the birds that are useful, but 

 notwithstanding these witnesses in its favour any attempt to 

 plead the cause of the Crow in this country would be vain. 



The sagacity of the Crow is as proverbial as that of the 

 Raven, and in illustration of this quality a nearly endless num- 

 ber of anecdotes might be cited — some of venerable antiquity. 

 Many no doubt rest on fancy, but men who have seen the 

 bird's habit of dropping shell-fishes that they may be broken 

 by the fall, have some excuse for fabling that it would 

 fill a pitcher with stones to raise the level of the water it 



VOL. II. p p 



