THE ROOK. 309 



the west actually offered a reward of threepence for the killed dozen 

 of the plunderers. This tempting boon soon caused the country to be 

 thinned of grakles, and then myriads of insects appeared, to put the 

 good people in mind of the former plagues of Egypt. They damaged 

 the grass to such a fearful extent that, in 1749, the rash colonists 

 were obliged to procure hay from Pennsylvania, and even from Eng- 

 land. Buffon mentions, that grakles were brought from India to 

 Bourbon, in order to exterminate the grasshoppers. The colonists, 

 seeing these birds busy in the new-sown fields, fancied that they were 

 searching for grain, and instantly gave the alarm. The poor grakles 

 were proscribed by Government, and in two hours after the sentence 

 was passed, not a grakle remained in the island The grasshoppers 

 again got the ascendancy, and then the deluded islanders began to 

 mourn for the loss of their grakles. The governor procured four of 

 these birds from India, about eight years after their proscription, and 

 the State took charge of their preservation. Laws were immediately 

 framed for their protection, and lest the people should have a 

 hankering for grakle pie, the physicians were instructed to proclaim 

 the flesh of the grakle very unwholesome food. Whenever I see a 

 flock of rooks at work in a turnip-field, which, in dry weather, is often 

 the case, I know that they have not assembled there to eat either the 

 turnips or the tops, but that they are employed in picking out a grub 

 which has already made a lodgment in the turnip. 



Last spring I paid a visit, once a day, to a carrion crow's nest on 

 the top of a fir tree. In the course of the morning in which she had 

 laid her fifth egg, I took all the eggs out of the nest, and in their 

 place I put two rooks' eggs, which were within sire days of being 

 hatched. The carrion crow attended on the stranger eggs, just as 

 though they had been her own, and she raised the young of them 

 with parental care. When they had become sufficiently large I took 

 them out of the nest, and carried them home. One of them was sent 

 up to the gamekeeper's house, with proper instructions ; the other 

 remained with me. Just at this time, an old woman had made me a 

 present of a barn-door hen. " Take it, sir," said she, " and welcome ; 

 for if it stays here any longer, we shall be obliged to kill it. When 

 we get up to wash in the morning, it crows like a cock. All its 

 feathers are getting like those of a cock ; it is high time that it was 



