A Plea for the Rooks. 569 



Now, the Rook is an omnivorous bird, and nothing seems to come 

 amiss to its appetite. We have seen that it will occasionally eat 

 corn, but its food principally consists of worms and insects, an 

 astonishing number of which a single Rook will devour in a single 

 day ; and when we consider the vast flocks of these birds which 

 abound in every parish, I may almost say on every farm, we'shall 

 be lost in -wonder and admiration, for the mind falters at the 

 amount, and fails, to take in the enormous quantity of injurious 

 insects which these useful birds destroy every year. 



And now that I have shortly stated my case, I proceed to prove 

 it by the testimony of all our best and soundest ornithologists, and 

 most accurate out-door observers ; and here I can bring such an 

 array of witnesses, and names of so great and so deserved notoriety 

 on the point, that he must be a bold and hardened sceptic, who 

 still holds out and refuses credence to their united assertions. 



There can be no question that in former dajs public opinion in 

 this country was entirely against Rooks, as we may infer from the 

 following entry among certain presentments concerning the parish 

 of Alderley in Cheshire, in 1598, being the fortieth year of Queen 

 Elizabeth's reign: 'We find that there in no Crow-nett in the parish, 

 a payne that one be bought by the charge of the parish.'* A 

 pretty clear proof that the destruction of these birds was at that 

 day regular and systematic ; and I need not stop to point out that 

 from that day to this, though I hope not regularly and systematic- 

 ally, Rooks have met with persecution, under the impression of 

 their mischievous habits. To prove, then, that this was a gross libel 

 on their character at that day, and that it is not through education 

 or strict discipline that they have mended their manners in these 

 days, I will adduce as my first witness in their favour our own 

 countryman, Aubrey, who flourished about the year 1670. In his 

 13th chapter, he says, ' In the peacefull raigne of King James I. 

 the Parliament made an Act for provision of Rooke-netts and 

 catching Crows to be given in charge of court barons, which is by 

 the stewards observed, but I never knew the execution of it. I have 

 heard knowinge countrymen affirme that Rook wormes, which the 



* ' Stanley on Birds,' i. 248. 



