336 PURPLE GRARLE. 



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, seeming as if hung in mourn- 

 ing ; their notes and screaming the meanwhile resembling the 

 distant sound of a great cataract, but in more musical cadence, 

 swelling and dying away on the ear according to the fluctua- 

 tion of the breeze. In Kentucky, and all along the Mississippi, 

 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 of the territory of the United 

 States. 



Every industrious farmer complains of the mischief com- 

 mitted 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 atten- 

 tion, 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 

 neighbouring 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 in- 

 dustrious cultivator, I can assure him that, were I placed in 

 his situation, I 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 unmo- 

 lested, would soon consume nine-tenths of all the production 

 of his labour, and desolate the country with the miseries of 

 famine ! Is not this another striking proof that the Deity 

 has created nothing in vain, and that it is the duty of man, 



