296 BIRDS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO MAN. 



If crows were less wary, so many would fall victims to the 

 wrath of planters that their extermination in the cultivated 

 portions of our country would soon come to pass. They 

 come nearer to living by their wits than any other birds we 

 know. However, their sagacity is not useful to them alone ; 

 it makes it possible for us to avoid their villanies by exciting 

 their suspicions. Thus, on the whole, we have reason to be 

 glad that crows are as wise as they are, for we know that 

 their annual consumption of insects is enormous, and that it 

 is unquestionably better to keep them away from the fields 

 a week or two in seed-time than to destroy them, and thus 

 to lose their assistance. 



We are inclined to believe that if farmers dealt with crows 

 as intelligently as crows deal with farmers there would be 

 vastly less heard about the injury they do. The boy who put 

 his finger to the dim edge of a humming buzz-saw, with the 

 remark " It looks as if it were there," was accustomed there- 

 after to rely more on vision. The man who expects wind- 

 mills, scarecrows, old newspapers, bottles, and sheet tin to 

 protect his field, when he has seen them fail year after year, 

 needs some such lesson as the boy had to make him more 

 acute. " Br'er Rabbit'' is scarcely more at home "in a briar- 

 patch' 1 than crows among these harmless objects, with which 

 they have been acquainted from youth up, and which were 

 never known to harm anything. 



They soon learn what is dangerous and what is nut. If one 

 is shot or poisoned or caught, his comrades remember his 

 misfortune and thereafter avoid the place of its occurrence. 

 They are so apprehensive of danger that they seldom alight near 

 one that is dead, though it may never have been a companion. 



Crows are accustomed to do most of their foraging very 

 early in the morning and on rainy days. The farmer who 

 neglects to traverse his corn-land at these times is sure to 

 rue it. They will take advantage of a dense fog, and attack 

 fields they would hardly dare fly over in good weather. 



