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. 
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 
