THE ROOK 71 



ground, suddenly raises a stick. They will instantly fly off, 

 evidently in great alarm. 



While the young are being reared, the parent birds frequent 

 corn-fields and meadows, where they search about for those plants 

 which indicate the presence of a grub at the root. Such they 

 unscrupulously uproot, and make a prize of the destroyer concealed 

 beneath. They are much maligned for this practice, but without 

 reason ; for, admitting that they kill the plant as well as the grub, it 

 must be borne in mind that several of the grubs on which they feed 

 (cockchafer and daddy-longlegs) live for several years underground, 

 and that, duringj^iat period, they would if left undisturbed, have 

 committed great^vages. I have known a large portion of a bed 

 of lettuces destroyed by a single grub of Melolontha, having actually 

 traced its passage underground from root to root, and found it 

 devouring the roots of one which appeared as yet unhurt. Clearly, 

 a Rook would have done me a service by uprooting the first lettuce, 

 and capturing its destroyer. 



I must here advert to a peculiar characteristic of the Rook 

 which distinguishes it specifically from the Crow. The skin sur- 

 rounding the base of the bill, and covering the upper part of the 

 throat, is, in the adult birds, denuded of feathers. Connected 

 with this subject many lengthy argum.ents have been proposed 

 in support of two distinct opinions : one, that the bareness above 

 mentioned is occasioned by the repeated borings of the bird for its 

 food ; the other, that the feathers fall off naturally at the first 

 moult, and are never replaced. I am inclined to the latter view, 

 and that for two reasons : first, if it be necessary (and that is not at 

 all clear) that the Rook, in order to supply itself with food, should 

 have no feathers at the base of its bill, I believe that nature would 

 not have resorted to so clumsy a contrivance, and one so annoying 

 to the bird, as that of wearing them away bit by bit : and, secondly, 

 the bare spot is, as far as I have observed, of the same size and 

 shape in all birds, and at all periods of the year, a uniformity which 

 can scarcely be the result of digging in soils of various kinds, and 

 at all seasons. I cannot, therefore, but think that the appearance 

 in question is the result of a law in the natural economy of the 

 bird, that the feathers are not nihhed off, but fall off, and that 

 they are not renewed, because nature never intended that they 

 should grow there permanently ; if not, why is there no 

 similar abrasion in the Crow ? The number of lambs eaten by 

 Crows is very small after all, and birds' eggs are not always in 

 season, nor is carrion so very abundant ; so that, during a great 

 portion of the year, even Crows must dig for their livelihood, and 

 the great distinction between a Crow and a Rook is, that the former 

 has actually no bare space at the base of his bill. But the question 

 is still open, and the reader may make his own observations, which 

 in Natural History, as well as in many other things, are far better 

 than other people's theories. 



