168 THE BOOK UPON HIS TEIAL 



have roused the sporting interest, adducing damning 

 evidence of ravages upon the eggs of game-birds, 

 especially grouse and blackgame. The Border Union 

 Agricultural Society proclaimed a crusade to last for a 

 month ; and within that period, besides harrying nests 

 and destroying eggs and nestlings, 4400 rooks were 

 killed and paid for at the rate of threepence per 

 head. Other agriculture societies have taken up 

 the matter; next spring will probably be one of 

 exemplary vengeance over the greater part of the 

 Lowlands, and already one fancies that there is an 

 additional note of anxiety in Chaucer's * crow with 

 voice of care/ 



The most devoted lover of birds must admit that the 

 time has come when it is necessary to adopt some 

 repressive measures. The excessive increase of the 

 rook population, to the detriment of other wild species, 

 has been the subject of growing solicitude on the part 

 of those who care for country things ; now that farmers 

 and sportsmen have joined with naturalists in de- 

 manding a check, something effective is pretty sure to 

 be done, and not a moment too soon. Nobody wants 

 to extirpate the rook; English landscape could not 

 afford to part with its cawing colonies ; but it must be 

 as colonists, and not an army of occupation, that rooks 

 receive their welcome among us. 



The results of some careful experiments conducted 

 by Sir John Gilmour of Montrave, a well-known 

 Scottish agriculturist, have been published lately. Sir 

 John, wishing to ascertain the relative advantage and 



