ROOKS. 199 



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 under-ground progress, inflicting death on stems 

 of many future grains. Their sagacity, too, in discovering 

 that a field of wheat, or a meadow, is suffering 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. 



We remember, a few years ago, seeing, for several days, a 

 flight of Rooks regularly resorting to a field close to the 

 house ; and, on walking over it, observed that the whole 

 surface was covered with uprooted stems of one particular 

 plant, and on looking more narrowly it was ascertained that 

 many of those still untouched were of an unhealthy yellow 

 appearance, and that to these alone the Rooks seemed to 

 direct their attention ; and, on still closer examination, the 

 roots of each of these unhealthy plants were found to have 

 been attacked by a small grub, which at once accounted for 

 the daily presence of these sable visitants. 



A similar testimony in favour of a bird of this species, the 

 Purple Grakle, or New England Jackdaw, occurs in KING'S 

 Narrative (vol. ii., page 217). He says, that " a reward of 

 threepence a dozen was once awarded in that country for the 

 extirpation of the Grakles ; and the object was almost 

 effected, to the cost of the inhabitants, who at length dis- 

 covered that Providence had not formed these supposed 

 destructive birds in vain : for, notwithstanding they caused 

 great havoc among the grain, they made ample recompence, by 



