216 GRASS SCARIFIED BY ROOKS. [PART II. 
about an acre of meadow-land to be so completely 
rooted up and scarified, that he took it for granted 
it had been done under the bailiff’s direction to 
clear it from moss, and on arriving at the farm 
inquired whether such was not the case. The 
answer, however, was “Oh, no, Sir, we haven't 
been at work there at all; it’s the Rooks done all 
that.” The mistake was a very natural one, for 
though I have often seen places where grass has 
been pulled up by rooks, yet I never saw such 
clean or wholesale work done by them as on this 
occasion. It could not apparently have been exe- 
cuted more systematically or perfectly by the most 
elaborate “scarifier” that Crosskill or Ransome 
could turn out. On examining the spot after- 
wards I found that the object of the rooks’ re- 
searches had doubtless been a small white grub, 
numbers of which still remained in the ground a 
short distance below the surface. In the following 
spring I noticed that the part of the field where 
this had taken place was densely covered with 
cowslips, much more so than the rest of it. Pos- 
sibly the roots of these plants may have been the 
proper food for the grubs, and therefore selected 
by the parent insect as receptacles for her eggs. 
A sharpish controversy has been maintained 
