BOOK. 271 



tithe still falls to their share, have they not fairly earned 

 it ?* I have rarely myself seen them committing havoc 

 amongst the stacks, except during severe frosts in the 

 depth of winter, when the iron-bound soil has stayed 

 their useful labours, and deprived them of their accus- 

 tomed food. "We often (says Bishop Stanley) hear 

 persons congratulating themselves on a deep snow, a 

 hard frost, or dry weather, as the surest means of 

 destroying insects, whereas it is just the reverse. A 

 hard frost, or a deep snow, or a dry summer, are the very 

 best protection they can have, and for this reason : the 

 rooks and other birds cannot reach that innumerable 

 host which pass the greatest part of their existence 

 underground. In vain the hungry rook, in a hard frost, 

 looks over a fine fallow, or a field of new-sown wheat. 

 He may be seen sitting on a bare bough like Tantalus, 

 in the midst of plenty beyond his reach, with his 

 feathers ruffled up, casting every now and then an 

 anxious glance over the frozen surface, beyond the 

 power even of his strong beak to penetrate." As an egg 

 stealer undoubtedly he shows himself a true member of 

 the corvine race ; but again, as some palliation, let me 

 add that I have invariably noticed, when most abused 

 for such pilferings, the spring has been an unusually 

 dry one, and the poor birds have been hard put to it to 

 supply food for themselves and their clamorous young. 

 This was particularly the case in 1864,f when a long 

 drought set in just at the time when the nestlings were 



* Mr. Jesse, an accurate observer and true friend of the rook, 

 remarks (Nat. Hist. Gleanings, vol. ii.) " In order to be convinced 

 that these birds are beneficial to the farmer, let him observe the 

 same field in which his ploughman and his sower are at work. 

 He will see the former followed by a train of rooks, while the 

 sower will be unattended and his grain remain untouched." 



f See also some most interesting remarks on the same point, 

 by Knapp, in his "Journal of a Naturalist," p. 177. 



