THE MAGPIE 167 



a few eggs (bantam's preferably), and setting three or four traps 

 round it. The Musk Rat-trap (American pattern, Fig. 104) is 

 the best for capturing jays and also magpies. Where jays are 

 numerous, immense quantities may be taken in winter when there 

 is frost by means of the improvised nest of eggs and traps placed 

 round, a dead rabbit being also a killing bait. 



MAGPIE. This bird is troublesome to the game-preserver, 

 though less common than formerly, and except in some wild dis- 

 tricts or in woods and enclosures where the game is left to take care 

 of itself, is fast becoming extinct. Its depredations on pheasant 

 and other game-bird eggs, and its partiality for young birds and 

 small rabbits render repressive measures imperative. As the nest 

 is large and generally built in the same locality every year, it may 

 be easily found and destroyed. The best bait is egg-shells or eggs, 

 placing three or four on a hedge or in grass near favourite haunts 

 of the birds, or a small rabbit paunched and split. Three or four 

 traps set round such bait will generally prove successful in capture. 

 Some trappers, however, bait each trap with a small piece of bad or 

 high meat, secured to the table or plate, and scatter the traps some- 

 what thickly. In using paunched or dead rabbit as bait this should 

 be tightly pegged to the ground. Being so uncommon the magpie 

 exerts little influence beyond the woods and their immediate en- 

 virons, favouring the forester by destroying snails, slugs, cock- 

 chafers, beetles, insect larvae, mice and voles. The magpie eats 

 cherries. 



ROOK. The rook has been notorious for damage to corn and grain 

 at seed-time for centuries, inasmuch as Henry VIII enacted that 

 " every one should do his best to destroy rooks, crows, and choughs, 

 upon pain of amerciament, and that every hamlet should provide 

 and maintain crow-nets for ten years, and that the taker of the 

 crows should have after the rate of 2d. per dozen " (about equal to 

 a present value of 4^. per crow). Rooks are still very troublesome 

 on a farm in disturbing and eating corn, maize, and peas, also on 

 newly -planted and mature potatoes. In some cases they are so 

 numerous that many farmers would be glad of an enactment by 

 Edward VII to mulct owners of rookeries with the expenses they 

 are put to in scaring, and with damage to the crops, and also to keep 

 the number of rooks under control by shooting the newly-fledged 

 birds in the respective rookeries to such an extent as make the num- 

 ber at least stationary and not increasing. Good to the farmer is 

 measured by the wireworms, leather-jackets, slugs, snails, worms, 

 woodlice, millipedes, cockchafer and other grubs the rooks consume. 

 That they devour untold numbers of insect pests is unquestion- 

 able, but how is it that great patches of cereals are " under-eaten off " 

 by wireworm in the vicinity of a rookery and the rooks not as 

 eager to bill out the pests as they are the seed-grain ? Surely the 

 value of rooks to agriculturists is, in not a few instances, over- 



