278 The Great World's Farm 



of one; but when the plants are weak, as they often are 

 on hght, chalky soil, there the wire-worm destroys some- 

 times the half, and occasionally the whole, of a crop. 



To help him in the perpetual war which has to be 

 waged with these three special foes, the farmer has 

 friends — the sparrow again, and the crow, jackdaw, mag- 

 pie, jay, all the smaller birds of prey, in fact, and many 

 of the larger; and besides these, he has the stoat, weasel, 

 mole, and hedgehog, which last, though much persecuted, 

 is most useful, and quite inoffensive. 



The battle about the crow is only less fierce than that 

 about the sparrow, but while it is no doubt true that he 

 does uproot some plants in his search for grubs, that he 

 does steal a little corn, and that, when insects are scarce, or 

 crows too many, he even attacks the crops, still, where 

 crows are poisoned, wire-worm increases and crops fail. 

 One crow will have as many as three dozen daddy-grubs 

 or click-beetles in its crop at once, and the birds go over 

 the ground yard by yard in the most systematic manner, 

 working from early dawn till evening, each bird catching, 

 it is said, at least fifty wire-worms in the day. 



In some parts of the country the crows are often joined 

 at their work in the furrows by large flocks of gulls, tit- 

 mice, and others, which appear when plowing begins, and 

 go away when the furrows are cleared, without taking any 

 pay from the farmer, except in the shape of the insect 

 food which he is glad to be rid of. 



Other very useful birds, which must be passed over 

 with a mere mention, are the various species of plover, 

 the partridge, and the pheasant — a couple of which will 

 eat fifteen hundred wire-worms at a meal — the thrush and 

 the landrail, both of which clear the fields of snails and 



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