IV. 

 THE ROOKS. 



THE crusade against the poor rooks is carried on so syste- 

 matically, the farmers being apt to forget, during the few 

 weeks in spring after corn has been sown, the great services 

 these sable insect-foes render during the other eleven months 

 of the year, that we reproduce here from the Zoologist a 

 simple, practical, and inexpensive means of protecting the 

 newly sown seed, without destroying the birds, from the 

 pen of Mr. Henry Reeks, F.Z.S. : 



"In all light soils, where wire- worms (larvae of the genus 

 Elater) abound, also those of the Tipulae and Noctuae, it 

 would be almost impossible to grow crops of corn or roots 

 without the friendly assistance of the rook. In this imme- 

 diate neighbourhood, where the soil is cold, strong, and 

 heavy, and consequently very free from wire-worms, rooks 

 and rookeries are comparatively scarce ; but from my farm 

 at Thruxton, where the soil is light and chalky, I can stand 

 and see seven large rookeries within a radius of three miles. 

 Now, for at least nine months in the year, these hosts of 

 rooks are purely insectivorous, and they may be easily com- 

 pelled to be so for the remaining three months. When the 

 autumn and spring corn is being sowed, and until after the 

 spire or blade is well out of ground, it is absolutely neces- 

 sary in large fields to employ a man with a gun, and also 

 when the corn is in the sheaf, but not so when it is ripen- 

 ing ; then a very simple device will keep them off much 

 more effectually than any gun, unless always present. I buy 



a pound of good strong crochet-cotton, which costs, I think, 



332 



