238 Twelve Months With 



Because of the size, color, voice and abundance 

 of the crow, he is perhaps the best known of all 

 our birds. While he has many acquaintances, he 

 has few friends. He has incurred the displeasure 

 of the farmers by his fondness for corn, but in 

 justice to the outlaw be it said that he seldom 

 eats any corn except when it is sprouting in the 

 fields. On the other hand, he is an efficient 

 scavenger, and he consumes a large quantity of 

 harmful weevils, cutworms, May beetles and grass- 

 hoppers, so that he is not so black inside as out! 

 He is a merry madcap withal, who seems to enjoy 

 his rakish reputation, and talks noisily about it 

 to his fellows. 



He is the American representative of the Euro- 

 pean rook. The rooks are protected in England 

 on account of their service to agriculture, not- 

 withstanding the mischief they do. Mr. Wilson 

 Flagg calls attention to the difference in the atti- 

 tude of America and some of the older countries 

 with reference to the birds : 



"The farmers of Europe, having learned by ex- 

 perience that without the aid of mischievous birds their 

 crops would be sacrificed to the more destructive insect 

 race, forgive them their trespasses as we forgive the 

 trespasses of cats and dogs, who in the aggregate are 

 vastly more destructive than birds. The respect shown 

 to birds by any people seems to bear a certain ratio to 

 the antiquity of the nation. Hence the sacredness with 

 which they are regarded in Japan, where the popula- 

 tion is so dense that the inhabitants would not consent 



