THE ROOK. 



135 



sects. Should we wish to know the amount of noxious 

 insects destroyed by rooks, we have only to refer to 

 a most valuable and interesting Paper on the Services 

 of the Rook, signed T. G. Clitheroe, Lancashire, 

 which is given in the Mag. of Nat Hist,^ vol. vi. 

 p. 142. I wish every farmer in England would read 

 it: they would then be convinced how much the 

 rook befriends them. 



Some author (I think Goldsmith) informs us, that 

 the North American colonists got the notion into 

 their heads that the purple grakle was a great 

 consumer of their maize; and these wise men of 

 the west actually offered a reward of three-pence for 

 the killed dozen of the plunderers. This tempting 

 boon soon caused the country to be thinned of 

 grakles, and then myriads of insects appeared, to put 

 the good people in mind of the former plagues of 

 Egypt. They damaged the grass to such a fearful 

 extent, that, in 1749, the rash colonists were obliged 

 to procure hay from Pennsylvania, and even from 

 England. Buffon mentions, that grakles were brought 

 from India to Bourbon, in order to exterminate the 

 grasshoppers. The colonists, seeing these birds busy 

 in the new-sown fields, fancied that they were 

 searching for grain, and instantly gave the alarm. i ? 



The poor grakles were proscribed by Government, 

 and in two hours after the sentence was passed, not 

 a grakle remained in the island* The grasshoppers 

 again got the ascendency, and then the deluded 

 islanders began to mourn for the loss of their grakles. 

 The governor procured four of these birds from 

 India, about eight years after their proscription, and 

 K 4 



