6 GAUE PEESERYEKS AND BIED PRESERVEES. 



the position of a human being afflicted with in- 

 curable cancer. 



But it is on the birds that we must mostly 

 depend for help, and how much they help may 

 be imagined when the Eev. F. 0. Morris tells 

 us *that a rook requires, at a very low esti- 

 mate, one pound of food a week, and that of 

 this nine-tenths are insects and worms ; so that 

 in one season 100 rooks will destroy 4,780 lbs. 

 of insects and larv^. On this calculation a 

 rookery of 10,000 rooks will consume in one 

 year 468,000 lbs. or 209 tons of worms, insects, 

 and their larvge.' 



Mr. Groome Napier states that one of the 

 most destructive grubs is the larva of the cock- 

 chafer, and that the rook and starling make it a 

 speciahty to eat them ; while Mr. F. Bond took 

 out of the crop of a cock pheasant 444 grubs 

 of the crane fly, out of the crop of a partridge 

 a handful of agrotis segetum, the turnip moth, 

 and teaspoonfuls of wire worms out of larks, 

 plovers, starlings, and rooks. 



