Winter or summer, the crow has his place in the prospect 



JIM CROW 



THE American crow (Corvus americanus) is 

 the wisest of all our birds, the best able to 

 take care of himself under any and all cir- 

 cumstances, the most difficult to exterminate, and 

 yet the easiest to tame. He has, from the earliest 

 settlement of the country, been looked upon as a 

 pest, and his tribe has enriched our language with 

 the word scarecrow. Probably he was regarded as 

 a pest long before the advent of the Mayflower; the 

 squaws of the Six Nations doubtless shooed him 

 from their maize-plantings while Joseph was hoard- 

 ing corn in Egypt, and the braves of the Six Nations 

 affirmed that you never saw a crow when you had 

 your bow with you. He is still to-day regarded as 

 a pest, though in a lesser degree, for we have learned 

 that a coating of coal-tar over the seed-grain will 

 generally protect the corn-planting, and we have 

 learned that his fondness for wireworms, cutworms, 



