ROOKS. 
199 
yet it is to the Rooks chiefly, if not entirely, that they can 
look for a remedy. Cased in its hard shelly coat, it eats its 
way into the heart of the roots of corn, and is beyond the 
reach of weather, or the attacks of other insects or small 
birds, whose short and softer hills cannot penetrate the recesses 
of its secure retreat, buried some inches below the soil. The 
Rook alone can do so; if watched, when seen feeding in a 
field of sprouting wheat, the heedless observer will abuse 
him, when he sees him jerking up root after root of the rising 
crop; hut the careful observer will, if he examines minutely, 
detect, in many of these roots, the cell of a wire-worm, in its 
silent and under-ground 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; hut that they do so 
is a fact beyond all contradiction. , 
We remember, a few years ago, seeing, for several days, a 
flight of Rooks regularly resorting to a field close to the 
house; and, on walking over it, observed that the whole 
surface was covered with uprooted stems of one particular 
plant, and on looking more narrowly it was ascertained that 
many of those still untouched were of an unhealthy yellow 
appearance, and that to these alone the Rooks seemed to 
direct their attention; and, on still closer examination, the 
roots of each of these unhealthy plants were found to have 
been attacked by a small grub, which at once accounted for 
the daily presence of these sable visitants. 
A similar testimony in favour of a bird of this species, the 
Purple Grakle, or New England Jackdaw, occurs in King’s 
Narrative (vol. ii., page 217). He says, that “ a reward of 
threepence a dozen was once awarded in that country for the 
extirpation of the Grakles ; and the object was almost 
effected, to the cost of the inhabitants, who at length dis- 
covered that Providence had not formed these supposed 
destructive birds in vain : for, notwithstanding they caused 
great havoc among the grain, they made ample recompence, by 
