568 A Plea for the Rooks. 



mischief is occasioned by them, and I have no wish to slur over 

 their bad qualities, and magnify their virtues ; convinced as I am 

 that such a proceeding would be fatal to my favourites, and that no 

 good purpose is ever answered by too violent partisanship. More- 

 over, I am so confident of the strength of my case, that I desire 

 nothing more than the plain unvarnished truth to be stated on 

 both sides, and have no fear for the verdict; being perfectly certain 

 that, on investigation, it will be acknowledged by every fair and 

 candid mind, that the benefits conferred on man by those members 

 of the animal kingdom whose cause I am advocating far outweigh, 

 indeed utterly obliterate, any harm they may at certain seasons 

 commit. 



To plunge at once^ then, in mediae res, and to take the bull by the 

 horns. The charge so often brought against Rooks by the agricul- 

 turist is, that they will occasionally pilfer and devour corn and 

 other crops, and undoubtedly, unless watched and scared away by 

 the bird-boy (or crow-tender as he is termed in some districts), they 

 will at certain seasons make considerable havoc, and do no small 

 mischief. This is the one single misdemeanor alleged against 

 them, and of this, too, it is never pretended that they are guilty 

 but for a very trifling portion of the year, and even here, too, 

 though I allow that it is a true bill in the main, they are sometimes 

 accused when innocent, and when they are intent upon very dif- 

 ferent food, the wireworm and the grub ; and are busily engaged in 

 the farmer's service in exterminating those most destructive pests; 

 but granted that they will for a very short period, if not prevented, 

 commit depredation on the corn, let us examine how they are 

 employed, and where they feed, and on what they subsist, during 

 the remaining nineteen-twentieths of the year, and we shall see 

 that it is on the larvae of a variety of noxious insects, wireworms of 

 various sorts, and grubs of cockchafers, and a thousand other 

 kindred ravagers of crops, which swarm throughout our fields, and 

 which, but for the assistance of Rooks (and other members of the 

 animal kingdom which come to our aid, and, making them their 

 prey, rid us of the evil), would breed a famine in the land, by their 

 enormous number and voracity. 



