MORALS OF ROOKS 377 



recognised but one penalty for all offences death, 

 rooks recognise degrees in guilt, and reserve the 

 extreme penalty of the law for the more heinous. 

 The saddest anniversary in the calendar of 

 "Parson Rook" is the massacre of the innocents, 

 which takes place in May. Is it justifiable in a 

 lover of birds, or not? Self-contradictory argu- 

 ments are often advanced for it. The rooks, it is 

 said, will become too numerous in the neighbour- 

 hood if the young are not killed off; or, again, 

 they will become too few, for they will forsake it 

 altogether. Rooks do sometimes forsake a rookery 

 on a sudden, but not, I think, for this cause. For 

 sentimental reasons, such as the pulling-down of 

 the old house round which they have grown up, or 

 even, it is said, the departure of the hereditary 

 owner and the arrival of a new-comer, they have 

 been known to leave it in disgust. And it is these 

 partial migrations which suggest, perhaps, the true 

 answer to the much-debated question whether rooks 

 do more good or harm to the farmer. There is 

 little doubt, I think, that feeding as they do, for 

 nine months out of the twelve, almost exclusively 

 upon grubs, especially the wire- worm which is so 

 fatal to the crops, they are, if only they are moder- 

 ate in number, of incalculable service to him. If 



