466 THE ROOK. 



detected from the gulls — as if to see which could mount highest. 

 At last the rooks left them and descended by spiral wheels, 

 taking some time before they regained the trees on which were 

 their nests and eggs. The old birds watched them and anxiously 

 returned to Abbey Park. Industrious feeders, from dawn 

 till dark you may see them on the streets, or rocks, or following 

 the newly-ploughed furrow, plodding after the first law of life — 

 love — or desire to perpetuate each kind, being the second, if not 

 its twin. They have a pouch in their under mandible to store 

 food for their young. You may see them stalking about as if 

 their throat was stuffed. On May 13th, 1893, I saw one filling 

 this pouch with something lying on the sands. I went to see 

 what it was, and found it was gravel to help the digestion of its 

 young. It is not a favourite with farmers, as the many scare- 

 crows on potato fields testify. But as Shakespeare makes the 

 over just deputy judge Angelo say in " Measure for Measure" — 



"We must not make a scarecrow of the Imv, 

 Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, 

 And let it keep one shape till custom makes it 

 Their perch and not their terror." 



The general belief now is that it does more good than harm, 

 although Mr W. B. Barrows, of the American Agricultural 

 Department, says — " They help the farmer by killing injurious 

 insects and mice, yet their consumption of Indian corn, rice, 

 oats, wheat, &c, more than counterbalances their good deeds. 

 Crows not only eat young corn, but pull up the plants to get the 

 germinating seed. They also harm potatoes, beans, pea-nuts, 

 cherries, and other fruits. They disseminate insects and 

 poisonous plants, eat beneficial insects, and destroy the eggs and 

 young of wild birds and domestic fowls." But I know of a farmer 

 being mistaken as to the cause of destruction of one of his grass 

 fields. He declared they destroyed the grass by digging up the 

 turf ; but on close observation it was found the roots were 

 entirely destroyed by myriads of grubs, and the rooks were busy 

 eating the cause of the mischief, which had they not done the 

 devastation would have spread next year and done incalculable 

 mischief. So farmers must take the ill along with the good. 

 A writer in the Scotsman in May 1889 says — 



"a word for the rook. 



" Whether rooks are the foes or the friends of the farmer, has long been 

 a controverted question. Some assert they do very considerable damage to 

 crops, while others maintain that any mischief they do is more than 

 counterbalanced by the immense number of slugs, wire-worms, &c, they 



