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INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY. 



remarkable quickness in detecting such spots, were in reality 

 benefactors, not destroyers. Numerous other examples of a 

 similar kind might be brought forward. To these might be 

 added others no less instructive, in which the Rooks in certain 

 districts having been extirpated, so great an increase of the 

 insect enemies of the agriculturist took place, that the crops, 

 for two or three successive seasons, were utterly destroyed, 

 and the farmers obliged at some trouble and expense to 

 reinstate the Rooks in order to save their crops. 



In 1831 or 32 we noticed great quantities of the skulls 

 and other bones of Rooks lying on the shores of Lough Neagh, 

 and understood that during a dense fog multitudes of these 

 birds had perished in the waters, and that their bodies had 

 afterwards been drifted ashore. After the great hurricane of 



the 7th of January, 1839, 

 many thousands were 

 picked up dead on the 

 shores of a lake some miles 

 in length, in the County 

 of Westmeath, with exten- 

 sive rookeries on its 

 borders.* 



The wary Magpie, the 

 busy Jackdaw, and the 

 cheerful Jay a bird un- 

 known in the northern 

 parts of Ireland all be- 

 long to the present family; 

 and various are the petty 

 larcenies which have been 

 laid to their charge. One 

 of the most perplexing 

 occurred at Cambridge, 

 where the Daws took a 

 Fig. 269.-HoRNniLL. fancy to employ, in the 



construction of their 



nests, the wooden labels used in the Botanic Garden for the 

 names of seeds and plants; and to such an extent did they 

 avail themselves of these materials, that so many as eighteen 



* This singular fact was communicated to Mr. R. Ball, of Dublin, by 

 Dean Vignolles, on whose property it occurred. 



