ROOKS. 195 



more particularly during the time of its undergoing the natural 

 malting process, when it not only swells, but becomes soft, with 

 an addition of about two-thirds of gum and sugar to the small 

 quantity it before contained. During this critical time, the fresh- 

 sown crop is undoubtedly in some peril ; but the birds chiefly 

 confine their attention to the grains which have escaped being 

 covered with the soil ; still, should the birds be considered as 

 unwelcome visitors, no money can be more profitably laid out, 

 at such critical moments, than the daily wages of a few boys, for 

 the sole purpose of frightening them away. 



Fresh-planted potatoes are also, for a time, in jeopardy ; but 

 when they have fairly sprouted, the Book's depredations are 

 suspended till the season of digging them up, when a trifling loss 

 may be sustained by their carrying off a few of such smaller 

 ones as they can conveniently grasp in their bills. 



Such are the depredations which may be fairly laid to theii 

 account ; but, nevertheless, we feel quite certain, that on strik- 

 ing a fair balance, the advantage will be in favour of preserving 

 the Eooks, and that if every nest were pulled to pieces, the 

 farmers would soon do all in their power to induce the old birds 

 to rebuild them ; finding out, when too late, that their crops 

 might suffer the fate which befell an entire district in Germany, 

 and which was once nearly deprived of its corn-harvest by an 

 order to kill the Eooks having been generally obeyed, the im- 

 mediate consequence being an increase of grubs and their de- 

 predations. For, allowing that the Rook may do an occasional 

 injury to the husbandman, it confers benefits in a far greater 

 proportion, and to an extent of which few are aware. Some of 

 our readers, who live in the southern counties, know full well 

 how the air on a summer's evening swarms with cockchafers 

 and other insects of the beetle tribe ; but, unless they are 

 naturalists, they do not know that each of those cockchafers or 

 beetles has been living underground for no less than from three 

 to four years, in the form of a large whitish grub, devouring in- 

 cessantly the tender roots of grasses, and every description of 

 grain ; and that it is in search of them the Rooks flock round 

 the ploughshare, and, thrusting their bills into the loosened earth, 

 devour these ruinous root-eaters by thousands and tens of thou- 



