By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 141 



rising crop ; but the careful observer will, if he examines minutely, 

 detect in many of these roots, the cell of a wirevvorm, in its silent 

 and underground progress, inflicting death on stems of many future 

 grains. Their sagacity too, in discovering that a field of wheat or 

 a meadow is suffering from the superabundance of some devouring 

 insect, is deserving of notice. Whether they find it out by sight, 

 smell, or some additional unknown sense, is a mystery, but that 

 they do so is a fact beyond all contradiction." — And now as a 

 climax I come at last to the evidence of him whom I consider the 

 first of living Naturalists, ("facile princeps ,, ) Mr. Waterton, 1 and 

 he says in his first book of Essays, wherein he has devoted a whole 

 chapter to the rooks : " Now if we bring, as a charge against them, 

 their feeding upon the industry of man, as for example, during the 

 time of a hard frost, or at seed time, or at harvest, at which periods 

 they will commit depredations, if not narrowly watched ; we ought, 

 in justice, to put down in their favour the rest of the year, when 

 they feed entirely upon insects," and then he refers us "if we wish 

 to know the amount of noxious insects destroyed by rooks," 

 to an admirable paper on the services of the rook, in the Magazine 

 of Natural History, 3 and concludes by saying "I wish every farmer 

 in England would read it: they would then be convinced how 

 much the rook befriends them ; " but in the second series of Essays 3 

 the same excellent writer is again provoked to defend his sable 

 friends by a threatened extermination of them in Scotland, and he 

 says " We have innumerable quantities of these birds in this part 

 of Yorkshire, and we consider them our friends : they appear in 

 thousands upon our grass lands, and destroy myriads of insects. 

 After they have done their work in these enclosures, you may pick 

 up baskets full of grass plants all injured at the root by the gnawing 

 insects. We prize the bird much for this, and we pronounce them 

 most useful guardians of our meadows and our pastures. Whenever 

 we see the rooks in our turnip fields, we know then, to our sorrow, 

 what is going on there : we are aware that grubs are destroying 



1 Waterton's Essays in Natural History, First series, p, 134. 



* Vol. vi., p. 142, Paper by T. Of. Clitheroe, Lancashire. 

 8 Waterton's Essays in Natural History, Seoond series, p. 169, 



