906 
a plunderer, to which by inclination it is not 
much addicted, and resorts to our newly-set po- 
tato fields, digging out the cuttings. Ranks are 
seen sadly defective, the result of its labours, I 
fear; and the request of my neighbours now and 
then for a bird from my rookery, to hang up zn 
terrorem in their fields, is confirmatory of its bad 
name. In autumn a ripe pear, or a walnut, be- 
comes an irresistible temptation, and it will oc- 
casionally obtain a good share of these fruits. In 
hard frost it is pinched again, visits for food the 
banks of streams, and in conjunction with its 
congener, the ‘villain crow,’ becomes a wayfar- 
ing bird, and ‘seeks a dole from every passing 
steed.’ Its life, however, is not always dark and 
| sombre; it has its periods of festivity also. When 
| the waters retire from meadows and low lands, 
where they have remained any time, a luxurious 
banquet is provided for this corvus, in the multi- 
tude of worms which it finds drowned on them. 
But its jubilee is the season of the cockchaffer, 
Melolantha vulgaris, when every little copse, every 
oak, becomes animated with it and all its noisy 
joyful family feeding and scrambling for the in- 
sect food. The power or faculty, be it by the 
| scent, or by other means, that rooks possess of 
discovering their food, is very remarkable. I 
_ have often observed them alight on a pasture of 
uniform verdure, and exhibiting no sensible ap- 
| pearance of withering or decay, and immediately 
commence stocking up the ground. Upon inves- 
tigating the object of their operations, I have 
found many heads of plantains, the little autum- 
| nal dandelions, and other plants drawn out of the 
ground and scattered about, their roots having 
been eaten off by a grub, leaving only a crown of 
leaves upon the surface. This grub beneath, in 
| the earth, the rooks had detected in their flight, 
| and descended to feed on it, first pulling up the 
plant which concealed it, and then drawing the 
larvee from their holes. By what intimation this 
bird had discovered its hidden food we are at a 
loss to conjecture; but the rook has always been 
supposed to scent matters with great discrimi- 
nation. 
“Tt is but simple justice to these often-cen- 
sured birds, to mention the service that they at 
times perform for us in our pasture-lands. There 
is no plant that I endeavour to root out with. 
more persistency in these places than the tufty- 
hair grass, Azra cespitosa. It abounds in all the 
colder parts of our grass-lands, increasing greatly 
when undisturbed, and, worthless in itself, over- 
powers its more valuable neighbours. The larger 
tufts we pretty well get rid off; but multitudes 
of small roots are so interwoven with the pasture 
herbage, that we cannot separate them without 
injury ; and these our persevering rooks stock up 
for us in such quantities, that in some seasons 
the fields are strewed with the eradicated plants. 
| The whole so torn up does not exclusively prove 
to be the hair-grass, but infinitely the larger por- 
tion consists of this injurious plant. 
CROW. 
The object | 
of the bird in performing this service for us, is to 
obtain the larvee of several species of insects, un- 
derground feeders, that prey on the roots, as Lin- 
nzeus long ago observed upon the subject of the 
little nard grass, Vardus stricta. This benefit is 
partly a joint operation: the grub eats the root, 
but not often so effectually as to destroy the 
plant, which easily roots itself anew: but the 
rook finishes the affair by pulling it up to get 
at the larvae, and thus prevents all vegetation ; 
nor do I believe that the bird ever removes a 
specimen that has not already been eaten, or com- 
menced upon, by the caterpillar.” 
The rook makes a large nest of twigs, lined 
with wool, hay, and other soft matters, lays four 
or five spotted eggs, and when the young are 
half-grown they leave the nest, and sit to be fed 
on the branches around; the young are then 
called dranchers; and then it is that the gunners 
have a battue, and a day of slaughter of the help- 
less young. This cruelty is justified as a means 
of preventing an over-abundance of those birds ; 
for, notwithstanding all that has been heretofore 
said in favour of the rooks, there are many far- 
mers who still think they are more injurious 
than serviceable. In winter, when the frost has 
hardened the ground, or when it is covered with 
snow, the poor rooks have a hard struggle to 
live; they are completely shut out from their 
natural food, and then they are compelled to be 
thieves, invading the rick-yards, and striving 
with the farm-yard poultry for a share of their 
grain. In such seasons many of the old rooks 
die of cold and hunger; and then, too, the most 
vigorous of them have a new propensity—be- 
coming herbivorous or granivorous, rather than 
insectivorous. 
It has been said that farmers in the United 
States of America suffer much loss of their field 
crops from the depredations of ground insects ; 
attributing these losses to the circumstance of 
there being no rooks in that country. So seri- 
ously is this circumstance believed, that attempts | 
have been made to introduce the rook into Vir- 
ginia, but hitherto without success. In Scotland 
the rooks are commonly called craws, and in York- 
shire they are called crakes, and in both these 
countries are wrongfully accused of devouring 
grain at all seasons. Both these provincial names 
are corruptions of crow, the name of a bird, which, 
though wearing the same livery, is a being of a 
very different character. 
“The crow,” says Mr. Wilson in his ‘ American 
Ornithology,’ “is perhaps the most generally 
known, and least beloved, of: all our land-birds ; 
having neither melody of song, nor beauty of 
plumage, nor excellence of flesh, nor civility of 
manners, to recommend him; on the contrary, 
he is branded as a thief and a plunderer,—a kind 
of black-coated vagabond, who hovers over the 
fields of the industrious, fattening on their la- 
bours; and, by his voracity, often blasting their 
expectations. Hated as he is by the farmer, 
