[11]--

"To thee Whose fields first fed my childish fantasy, Whose
mountains were my boyhood's wild delight, Whose rocks, and woods,
and torrents were to me The food of my soul's youthful appetite;
Were music to my ear--a blessing to my sight."

* * * * *

THE ROOK SERVICEABLE TO MAN.--PREJUDICE AGAINST IT.

A strong prejudice is felt by many persons against Rooks, on
account of their destroying grain and potatoes, and so far is this
prejudice carried, that I know persons who offer a reward for
every Rook that is killed on their land; yet so mistaken do I deem
them as to consider that no living creature is so serviceable to
the farmer as the Rook, except his own live stock.

In the neighbourhood of my native place is a rookery belonging to
William Vavasour Esq., of Weston in Wharfdale, in which it is
estimated there are 10,000 Rooks, that 1 lb. of food a week is a
very moderate allowance for each bird, and that nine-tenths of
such food consists of worms, insects, and their larvae: for
although they do considerable damage to the crops for a few weeks
in seed-time and harvest, particularly in backward seasons, yet a
very large proportion of their food, even at these times, consists
of insects and worms, which (if we except a few acorns, walnuts,
and potatoes in autumn) at all other times form the whole of their
subsistence.

Here, then, if my data be correct, there is the enormous quantity
of 468,000 lbs., or 209 tons of worms, insects, and their larvae
destroyed by the birds of a single rookery, and to everyone who
knows how very destructive to vegetation are the larvae 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. I have understood that in Suffolk and in some
of the southern counties, the larvae of the cockchafer are so
exceedingly abundant that the crops of corn are almost destroyed
by them, and that their ravages do not cease even when they have
become perfect insects. Various plans have been proposed to put a
stop to their ravages, but I have little doubt that their
abundance is to be attributed to the scarcity of Rooks, as I have
somewhere seen an account that these birds are not numerous in
those counties (I have never been there), either from the trees
being felled in which they nested, or from their having been
destroyed by the prejudiced farmer. I am the more inclined to be
of this opinion, beca