EEAEING AND PROTECTION. 43 



remedied by the trapping or shooting of the ciilprits. 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, AprU, and 

 May. I did not observe the real cause of their foraging and running about the 

 rookeries tiU 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 fuU of haK-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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