336 
PURPLE GRAKLE. 
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 elfect ; the whole trees for a considerable extent, from 
the top to the lowest branches, seeming as if hung in mourning ; 
their notes and screaming the meanwhile resembling the distant 
sound of a great cataract, but in more musical cadence, swell- 
ing and dying away on the ear, according to the fluctuation 
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 
industrious 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, the 
