NOTES AND QUERIES. 53 



favour, as their natural habits and the nature of their food have 

 become better understood. 



Not many years ago it was the practice amongst farmers in 

 some parts of the country to scatter poisoned grain broadcast, 

 for the purpose, as they alleged, of destroying the Rooks, which 

 they imagined to be hurtful to their crops. In this they were 

 mistaken, for the evidence of ornithologists has sufficiently 

 demonstrated many ways in which the Rook is useful to agricul- 

 turists ; and the short-sighted policy of the farmers, resulting as 

 it did in the wholesale poisoning of Partridges and Pheasants, the 

 legislature had to interfere, and an Act of Parliament was 

 passed in 1863, by which the use of poisoned grain was declared 

 illegal.* The recently published * Report of the Departmental 

 Committee appointed by the Board of Agriculture to inquire into 

 a Plague of Field Voles in Scotland" (1893), contains evidence 

 of the repeated admissions by Scottish farmers that Rooks not 

 only do good by devouring destructive larvse, but are extremely 

 useful in destroying large numbers of Field Voles, especially in 

 the young stage, when they are found in the nests, which are 

 systematically sought for and dug up.f 



It seems strange that it should have taken 360 years to bring 

 about this revulsion of feeling in the case of a bird which, being 

 sufficiently familiar and everywhere common, may be so easily 

 studied by those who will take the trouble to observe its habits. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MAMMALIA. 



Food of the Otter. — In the interesting article upon the Otter in the 

 last number of 'The Zoologist' (p. 1), I see no reference to this animal's 

 fondness for the common cray-fish, though another member of the same 

 genus is mentioned as preying habitually upon a large spiny crab. Last 

 spring, on the bank of a river not far from here, in which Otters were 

 numerous (to judge from the evidence they left of themselves), I gathered 

 up, and still have, a large handful of their dried droppings, which I found 



* ' The Poisoned Grain Prohibition Act,' 1863, 26 & 27 Vict. c. 113. 

 f See the Index to the Keport, under " Rooks." 



