50 Mr. Hepburn on the Habits of the Rook. 



during a storm, unless closely watched, every plant will be 

 stocked up ; and at such times they more especially frequent 

 sheep folded on turnip, and pilfer from the stackyard and from 

 the dunghills in process of formation. In spring they feed upon 

 all our cultivated grains (tares excepted, so far as I know), and 

 upon the germinated seed so long as it is succulent, and the 

 latest sown field or headrig is sure to be the haunt of all the 

 vagabond rooks in the neighbourhood : of late years they have 

 shown a strong partiality for bean-fields, and their attendance 

 on the potato-fields is but too well known. During severe 

 droughts in summer they often suffer greatly from hunger, and 

 attack the stacks even close by the onstead with much perti- 

 nacity, and fields of clover-hay are often much spoiled for mow- 

 ing, by their settling to feed on the seeds of the rye-grass : on 

 the approach of harvest they attack the crops where these are 

 lodged, or of stunted growth on the rocky knolls so common on 

 our trap formation. The labours of this bird in destroying in- 

 sects and grubs in their season, are apparent to all, and it would 

 appear that when a sufficiency can be obtained, they are preferred 

 to anything else. What a scene of busy industry does the later 

 cleared turnip-field present ! The rooks hardly move out of the 

 way of the ploughs and harrows ; the large fleshy grubs of two 

 root-devouring moths, Agrotis exclamationis and Agr. segetum, 

 which drill holes in the turnips larger than a goosequill, and 

 also destroy them in toto shortly after being singled, and a host of 

 other injurious insects, are greedily devoured or carried off to 

 their young; and, in the adjoining oat-field, perhaps every clod 

 and turf has been upturned in searching for the grub of the 

 crane-fly and the wireworm ; so that it is probable, if we were 

 better acquainted with the habits of our insect foes, we should 

 prize rooks more highly. 



I am well aware that much has been written both in their praise 

 and condemnation : I can conceive that in the badly ploughed 

 and badly managed districts in England, having a large breadth 

 in pasture, and where insect-life is much more vigorous than 

 with us, a large body of rooks might subsist in comfort and 

 prove a blessing to the farmer ; but here, where the land is an- 

 nually, or at all events biennially, under the plough, that they 

 have been suffered to increase, under the protection of ignorant 

 and selfish landlords, beyond their natural means of subsistence, 

 until they have become a curse rather than a blessing, is a fact 

 no less evident to our farmers, than that they had a station 

 appointed them by the all-wise Creator in the great system of 

 nature. 



November 1849. 



