REARING AND PROTECTION. 43 
remedied by the trapping or shooting of the culprits. The question as to the influence 
of the rook in pheasant coverts is one of those respecting which there is much to 
be said on both sides. The rook is so very valuable an ally to the agriculturist, by 
destroying an enormous number of grubs, wire worms, &c., that its case claims our 
most attentive consideration. In reply to the accusation that rooks occasionally 
destroy the eggs of the pheasant, Mr. James Barnes writes:—“ According to my 
own observations of above fifty years, the rook will eat eggs if placed about in open 
country pastures, &c., but I believe never goes on foraging excursions for eggs or 
young game, as the carrion crow does. Rooks will not only knock eggs to 
pieces openly placed in sight of their feeding grounds, but they will also, in hard 
frosty weather, devour many other things, such as slaughter-house garbage, or dead 
poultry, game, or fish that may lie about decomposing within their reach. My own 
observation is, that the rook is a real friend to the pheasant, and provides it with 
a deal of food at an acceptable season. In the years 1816 and 1817, I went with 
others to see the young rooks shot in Lord Middleton’s park, Pepper Harrow, 
Godalming, Surrey. The trees were high in an inclosure, but not at that time 
very thick on the ground, for there was some scrubby undergrowth and a rare crop 
of rank weeds—the open spaces were splashed as if whitewashed, as the undergrowth 
of all rookeries is during the first two or three weeks of May. Amongst this under- 
growth there were two or three pheasants’ nests, protected with boughs; and strict 
orders were given that no one should disturb the pheasants’ nests. I thought but 
little of this at the time; but afterwards I observed that where pheasants were 
preserved near a rookery, pheasants were to be seen there through March, April, and 
May. I did not observe the real cause of their foraging and running about the 
rookeries till about 1844, when I saw a cock pheasant pick up a piece of potato on 
a gravel walk, and run away with it into the shrubbery, and remembered that I 
had often seen pieces of potato, lying about, and had seen the rooks drop them and 
their pellets likewise. The latter were frequently full of half-digested grains, as if 
dropped through fright. I had seen, from the middle of February to the middle of 
May, bushels of pellets underneath the trees scratched over by the pheasants—of 
course for the food to be found therein; and there were always pheasants’ nests 
close at hand, even in or under the rookery. Where the potato is much cultivated, 
as in South Devon, a good many small potatoes would be turned up in ploughing 
the land, which the rook and jackdaw seemed to claim as their perquisites and 
carry off home. I have seen five or six fall of a morning on walking under the 
trees, but the birds never came down to pick one up. I have seen fall large brown 
grubs, the fern beetle, whole ears and loose grains of corn, pellets or quids 
half chewed or sucked over, and have seen the pheasants run and pick them up. 
There is fine living in variety for pheasants under a rookery, provided neither party 
is disturbed by strangers. Respecting the rooks’ pellets, from the middle of 
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