X96 ROOKS. 



sands. So injurious are they, indeed, in favourable seasons, 

 that the sum of twenty -five pounds was once allowed to a poor 

 farmer in Norfolk as a compensation for his losses ; and the 

 man and his servant declared that they had actually gathered 

 eighty bushels of cockchafers. 



In France, again, many provinces were so ravaged by grubs, 

 that a premium was offered by government for the best mode of 

 ensuring their destruction ; and yet, singularly enough, so little 

 were the people acquainted with the real and best mode of 

 stopping the mischief, that when their dreadful Revolution 

 broke out, accompanied with murder and bloodshed which can 

 never be forgotten, the country people, amongst other causes 

 of dissatisfaction with their superiors, alleged their being fond 

 of having rookeries near their houses ; and in one instance, a 

 mob of these misguided and ignorant people proceeded to the 

 residence of the principal gentleman in the neighbourhood, 

 from whence they dragged him, and hung his body upon a gibbet, 

 after which they attacked the rookery, and continued to shoot 

 the Rooks amidst loud acclamations. 



It is scarcely necessary to name the wire-worm as one of the 

 greatest scourges to which the farmers are exposed ; and yet it 

 is to the Rooks 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 underground progress in- 

 flicting death on stems of many future grains. Their sagacity, 

 too, in discovering that a field of wheat, or a meadow, is suffer- 

 ing 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. 



