294 CORVID^E. 



balance of Nature are seldom profitable, and it is said that 

 wherever Eooks or other birds of the kind have been effect- 

 ually destroyed, the result has shewn that the proceeding 

 was a mistake, and that agriculturists to save their crops 

 were compelled to reinstate the birds they had exterminated.* 

 Yet the experience thus gained is usually lost on all save 

 those immediately concerned in the affair, and accordingly 

 every now and then in some place or other, but mostly in 

 Scotland, agitation on the subject prevails.! This occasion- 

 ally leads to a more or less general persecution being ordered 

 and for a time carried on, but it frequently happens that the 

 landlord is better advised than his tenants, and after the 

 first outbreak of discontent his influence contrives that their 

 destructive efforts shall gradually cease. 



The food of the Book, as already shewn, consists prin- 

 cipally of worms and insects!, which, from the numbers of 

 the birds, are consumed to an enormous extent. But its 

 diet is extremely varied, and almost any other kind of animal 

 matter, even carrion, fishes and small birds and mammals are 

 acceptable, besides many vegetable products. Newly-sown' 

 grain until it has sprouted well above the ground requires 

 watching, and ripe corn, especially if laid by the wind or 

 when cut and in sheaves, sometimes suffers severely from the 



* Though reference to instances of this kind is made by man}' writers, the 

 Editor is unable to find any document in which the details of a single case are 

 satisfactorily given : the nearest approach to one is perhaps Mr. C. J. Cox's note 

 (Zool. p. 8953). 



f Such a movement was excited in the South-west of Scotland in 1838, but it 

 seems to have been allayed by the late Sir J. Stuart- Menteath by a pamphlet 

 entitled ' Farmers v. Rooks ' which the Editor however has not seen. He has 

 been more fortunate, thanks to Mr. Harvie Brown, in regard to a correspondence 

 which arose in 1844 between Mr. Hog of Newliston and his tenantry. In the 

 former controversy Selby, and in the latter Waterton, took part. 



J Melolontha solstitialis, Phyllopertha horticola, several species of Agriotes, 

 Agrotis segetum and A. exclamationis, and Tipula oleracea may be specially 

 named. 



Yet there is much truth in Jesse's remark that when the ploughman and the 

 sower are at work in the same field, the former will be followed by a train of 

 Rooks, while the latter will be unattended, and his grain remain untouched. 

 However the castings of Rooks, found under the trees they frequent, prove by the 

 husks they contain that these birds do eat corn, and sometimes a good deal of it. 



