PURPLE GRAKLE. 219 
.ike a blackening, sweeping tempest on the corn, dig off the external _ 
covering of twelve or fifteen coats of leaves, as dexterously as if done 
by the hand of man, and, having laid bare the ear, leave little behind 
to the farmer but the cobs, and shrivelled skins, that contained their 
favorite fare. I have seen fields of corn of many acres, where more 
than one half was thus ruined. Indeed the farmers, in the immediate 
vicinity of the Rivers Delaware and Schuylkill, generally allow one 
fourth of this crop to the Blackbirds, among whom our Grakle comes 
in for his full share. During these depredations, the gun is making 
great havock among their numbers, which has no other effect on the 
survivors than to send them to another field, or to another part of the 
same field. This system of plunder and retaliation continues until 
November, when, towards the middle of that month, they begin to 
sheer off towards the south. The lower parts of Virginia, North and 
South Carolina, and Georgia, are the winter residences of these flocks. 
Here numerous bodies, collecting together from all quarters of the 
interior and northern districts, and darkening the air with their numbers, 
sometimes form one congregated multitude of many hundred thousands. 
A few miles from the banks of the Roanoke, on the 20th of January, 
IT met with one of those prodigious armies of Grakles. They rose 
from the surrounding fields with a noise like thunder, and, descending 
on the length of road before me, covered it and the fences completely 
with black; and when they again rose, and, after a few evolutions, 
descended on the skirts of the high-timbered woods, at that time 
destitute of leaves, they produced a most singular and striking effect ; 
the whole trees for a considerable extent, from the top to the lowest 
branches, seemed as if hung in mourning; their notes and screaming 
the mean while resembling the distant sound of a great cataract, but in 
more musical cadence, swelling and dying away on the ear, according 
to the fluctuation of the breeze. In Kentucky, and all along the Mis- 
sissippi, from its juncture with the Ohio to the Balize, I found numbers 
of these birds, so that the Purple Grakle may be considered as a very. 
general inhabitant cf the territory of the United States. 
Every industrious farmer complains of the mischief committed on 
his corn by the Crow Blackbirds, as they are usually called; though, 
were the same means used, as with Pigeons, to take them in clap nets, 
multitudes of them might thus be destroyed, and the products of them 
in market, in some measure, indemnify him for their depredations. 
But they are most numerous and most destructive at a time when the 
various harvests of the husbandman demand all his attention, and all 
his hands, to cut, cure, and take in; and so they escape with a few 
sweeps made among them by some of the younger boys with the gun, 
and by the gunners from the neighboring towns and villages; and return 
from their winter quarters, sometimes early in March, to renew the 
like scenes over again. As some consolation, however, to the indus- 
trious cultivator, I can assure him, that were I placed in his situation, 
1 should hesitate whether to consider these birds most as friends or 
enemies, as they are particularly destructive to almost all the noxious 
worms, grubs and caterpillars, that infest his fields, which, were they 
allowed to multiply unmolested, would soon consume nine tenths of 
all the production of his labor, and desolate the country with the 
miseries of famine! Is not this another striking proof that the Deity 
