542 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
WIREWORMS. CROWS AND ROOKS DEVOUR IMMENSE NUMBERS. 
robin is very fond of these worms. The blackbirds and thrushes 
are constantly hunting the grass for them and other larvae and 
pupae. But the bird before all others for his efficiency in this 
work is the crow, in this country, and his brother, the rook, in 
Europe. Wireworms and their progenitors the suapping-beetlcs 
are the favorite food and the principal sustenance of these birds. 
And some idea of the importance and value of their services may 
be obtained from the following exceedingly interesting statement 
of Mr. T. G. Clithero, in the Magazine of Natural History, vol. 
vi, p. 142: “In the neighborhood of my native place, in the county 
of York, is a rookery, belonging to W. Vavasour, Esq., of Weston, 
in Wharfdale, in which it is estimated that there are 10,000 rooks- 
and one pound of food a week is a very moderate allowance for 
each bird, and that nine-tenths of their food consist of worms 
insects, and their larvae; for although they do considerable damage 
to the fields for a few weeks in seed-time and a few weeks in har¬ 
vest, particularly in backward seasons, yet a very large proportion 
of their food, even at these seasons, consists of insects and worms, 
which (if we except a few acorns and walnuts in autumn) compose 
at all other times the whole of their subsistence. Here, then, if 
my data be correct, there is the enormous quantity of 468,000 
pounds, or 209 tons of worms, insects, and their lame, destroyed 
by the rooks of a single rookery in one yeax-. To evei-y one who 
knows how very destructive to vegetation are the lame of the 
tribes of insects, as well as worms, fed upon by i-ooks, some slight 
idea may be formed of the devastation which i-ooks are the means 
of preventing.” 
It is stated iu the Rural New Yorker (1862, p. 29,) that the 
ciow can distinguish by the eye what no fai-mer can—evei-y plant 
which has a worm at its rdot; and that to obtain these insects it 
will frequently tear up in a short time lai-ge patches of turnips. 
We should incline to doubt the statement that it can accurately 
distinguish evei-y plaut which has a wirewortn infesting its root, 
but we see the same statement is made of the rook also. Mr. 
Curtis informs us that, to pick the worms fi-om the gi-owiug ci-ops 
is the occupation of the rook when he is seen gi-avely surveying a 
turnip or corn crop, and with astonishing sagacity selecting those 
plants only which have a few yellow leaves outside—the sui-e indi¬ 
cation of the presence of the wireworm and other insects. He states 
that a gentleman iu Norfolk, who well understands this subject, says: 
