ROOKS. 217 



posed ; and yet it is to the Rook chiefly, if not entirely, 

 that they can look for a remedy. Cased in its hard 

 shelly coat, it eats its way into the heart of the roots of 

 corn, and is beyond the reach of weather, or the attacks 

 of other insects, or small birds, whose short and softer 

 bills cannot penetrate the recesses of its secure retreat, 

 buried some inches below the soil. The Rook alone can 

 do so ; if watched, when seen feeding in a field of 

 sprouting wheat, the heedless observer will abuse him, 

 when he sees him jerking up root after root of the rising 

 crop; but the careful observer will, if he examines 

 minutely, detect, in many of these roots, the cell of a 

 wire-worm, in its silent and under-ground progress, in- 

 flicting death on stems of many future grains. Their 

 sagacity, too, in discovering that a field of wheat, or a 

 meadow, is suffering from the superabundance of some 

 devouring insect, is deserving of notice. Whether they 

 find it out by sight, smell, or some additional unknown 

 sense, is a mystery ; but that they do so is a fact beyond 

 all contradiction. 



We remember, a few years ago, seeing, for several 

 days, a flight of Rooks regularly resorting to a field close 

 to the house ; and, on walking over it, observed that the 

 whole surface was covered with uprooted stems of one 

 particular plant, and on looking more narrowly it was 

 ascertained that many of those still untouched were of 

 an unhealthy yellow appearance, and that to these alone 

 the Rooks seemed to direct their attention ; and, on still 

 closer examination, the roots of each of these unhealthy 

 plants were found to have been attacked by a small 

 grub, which at once accounted for the daily presence of 

 these sable visitants. 



A similar testimony in favour of a bird of this species,* 1 

 the Purple Grakle, or New England Jackdaw, occurs in 

 KING'S Narrative (vol. ii., page 217). He says, "that a 

 reward of threepence a dozen was once awarded in that 

 country, for the extirpation of the Grakles ; and the ob- 

 ject was almost effected, to the cost of the inhabitants, 



