| and, above all, rooks. 
WIRE-WORM. 
WISTARIA. 
this means 351 were collected in a piece of land | plants to get the wire-worms, and do not touch 
600 feet long and 56 broad. The quantity which 
was taken in other fields was not counted. There 
were caught in the furrows, according to their 
length, 4, 6, 10, to 14 worms. It would be ser- 
viceable if children always followed the plough 
and gathered these yellow worms into a bottle; 
they would by that means be considerably dimi- 
nished, and perhaps in time entirely extermi- 
nated.” “A striking instance of the use of 
hand-picking,” says Mr. Spence, “appeared in 
the ‘West Briton,’ a provincial paper, in No- 
vember, 1838, stating that Mr. G. Pearce, of 
Pennare Goran, had saved an acre and a half of 
turnips, sown to replace wheat destroyed by the 
wire-worm and attacked by hosts of these larve, 
by setting boys to collect them ; who, at the rate 
of 13d. per 100, gathered 18,000; as many as 50 
| having been taken from one turnip. Thus, at 
the expense of only £1 2s. 6d.,an acre and a half 
of turnips, worth from £5 to £7, or more, was 
saved ; while, as the boys could each collect 600 
per day, 30 days’ employment was given to them 
_ at 9d. per day, which they would not otherwise 
_ have had.” 
A number of birds, both tame and wild, are 
greedy destroyers of wire-worms ; and some may 
_ be entirely encouraged in their warfare against 
_ them, and others occasionally or limitedly ac- 
cording to circumstances. The chief are ducks, 
turkeys, common poultry, pheasants, partridges, 
plovers, blackbirds, thrushes, robins, wagtails, 
“Wary as the rook is on 
most occasions,” says Mr. Curtis, “he follows 
the plough fearlessly, to feed upon the wire- 
worms and other insects; and here his services 
are most invaluable, for if you dig up the wire- 
worms and lay them upon the earth, they will 
often burrow down and disappear in a few 
seconds ; many, therefore, of the feathered race 
have little chance of catching them in the ploughed 
_ field; but the form of the bill, combined with 
_ the strength and assiduity of the rook, is well 
adapted for detecting them in their hiding- 
_ places. 
_ likewise the occupation of the rook when we see 
_ him gravely surveying a turnip or corn crop, 
To pick them from the growing crops is 
and with astonishing sagacity selecting those 
plants only which have a few yellow leaves out- 
side, the sure indication of the presence of the 
wire-worm and other insects. A gentleman in 
Norfolk, who well understands this subject, says, 
‘The rooks convey the first tidings of the pre- 
_ sence of this formidable enemy by hovering over 
_ a field in flocks, and actually pulling up the tur- 
_ nips by the roots to search for them, and I can- 
not but believe that their sagacity directs them 
to the infested plants, which are distinguished 
by their drooping leaves and dark unhealthy as- 
pect.’ An equally observant friend, in Surrey, 
| says, ‘The rooks are accused of doing injury by 
pulling up the wheat, but I, as well as others 
here, believe that they pull up the attacked 
NN  ———————————————————E—EEE eS 
the healthy plants.’ The bailiff to the same 
party informed me, during a period when the 
wire-worms were abundant, that the rooks had 
been busily occupied amongst the barley in May, 
and where it looked sickly had drawn the earth 
away from the roots to find the wire-worms, and 
where they had been ‘working the earth’ he 
could not find any of the worms. But there is 
still stronger and incontrovertible evidence in 
their favour ; for in the stomachs of rooks which 
have been shot when following the plough in 
barley-sowing, a few grains of corn only were 
found, but abundance of wire-worms and other 
insects. Mr. J. Denson, sen., says, ‘I have. re- 
peatedly examined the crops of rooks: in six 
young that had been shot, the crops were nearly 
filled with wire-worms ; in the crops of others, I 
have found the larve of the cockchafer, and 
other grubs that I am not entomologist enough 
to know the names of. In one or two instances, 
in frosty weather, I have examined the crop of 
one or more rooks that had been shot ; it con- 
tained dung, earth, and a small portion of grain. 
I will just notice that the land adjoining Mr. 
Wiles’s rookery is yearly sown with pulse or 
grain, and in no instance have I known or heard 
that the land has in consequence failed of a 
crop. The following remarks also, by Mr. T. G. 
Clithero, are exceedingly interesting :—‘ In the 
neighbourhvod 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 es- 
timated that there are 10,000 rooks ; that 1 Ib. 
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 larve ; for 
although they do considerable damage to the 
fields for a few weeks in seed-time and a few | 
weeks in harvest, particularly in backward sea- 
sons, 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 quan- 
tity of 468,000 Ibs., or 209 tons, of worms, in- 
sects, and their larve, destroyed by the rooks of 
a single rookery in one year. To every one who 
knows how very destructive to vegetation are | 
the larvee of the tribes of insects, as well as 
worms, fed upon by rooks, some slight idea may 
be formed of the devastation which rooks are the 
means of preventing.” 
WISP. A small hand-bunch of hay or straw, 
used for rubbing down horses and cattle, or for 
any similar purpose. 
WISTARIA. A small genus of ornamental 
exotic plants of the kidney-bean division of the 
leguminous order.—Consequa’s species, Wastarva 
Consegyuana—called by some botanists Wistaria 
sinensis, and by others Glycine senensis—was in- 
troduced to Britain from China in 1816; and is 
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