574 A Plea for the Rooks. 



insects. After they have done their work in these enclosures, you 

 may pick up baskets full of grass plants all injured at the root by 

 the gnawing insects. We prize the bird much for this, and we 

 pronounce them most useful guardians of our meadows and our 

 pastures. Whenever we see the Rooks in our turnip fields, we 

 know then, to our sorrow, what is going on there : we are aware 

 that grubs are destroying the turnips, and we hail with pleasure 

 the arrival of the Rooks, which alone can arrest their dreaded 

 progress. The services of the Rooks to our oak trees are 

 positively beyond estimation : I do believe, if it were not for this 

 bird, all the young leaves in our oaks would be consumed by the 

 cockchafers. Whilst the ring-dove is devouring the heart shoot 

 of the rising clover, you may see the Rook devouring insects in 

 the same field.' 



I trust that such a host of witnesses as I have adduced, and 

 witnesses of the first order in intelligence and intimate acquaint- 

 ance with the subject, will not have failed to carry conviction to 

 my readers ; but as facts are stubborn things, and preconceived 

 opinions are hard to eradicate, and the world is apt to accuse orni- 

 thologists of riding their hobby too hard, and concealing every- 

 thing that tells against their favourites, before I conclude, I will 

 state the experience of practical men, who, thinking to interfere 

 with the balance of powers as arranged and sustained by nature, 

 have thus recorded their failure.* ' The inhabitants of Virginia 

 contrived to extirpate the little crow from their country at 

 an enormous expense, and having done so, they would gladly 

 have given twice as much to buy back the tribe.'f ' A reward 

 of threepence a dozen was offered in New England for the 

 purple grackle, which commits great havoc among the crops, but 

 protects so much more herbage than he destroys, that the insects 

 when he was gone caused the total loss of the grass in 1749, 

 and obliged the_colonists to get hay from Pennsylvania, and even 

 to import it from Great Britain. A few years since an Act was 



Quarterly Revieiv, January,' 1858, Article on ' Sense of Pain in Men and 

 Animals,' p. 203. 



f Stanley on Birds, i. 252 ; King'sJNarrative, ii. 217. 



