“So far there is nothing to find fault with,” said Uncle Paul. “A bushel more or less of acorns is a small matter, and I willingly hand them over to the rooks to dispose of in their curious fashion. But other sprouting seeds suit them equally well, especially wheat, which they can so easily procure in winter in the recently sown fields. When I see a flock of rooks sedately pacing the furrows and plunging their beaks in here and there where the ground is softened by a thaw, I know well enough those birds might pretend they were hunting for June-bug larvæ, but he would be a simpleton indeed who accepted this explanation at that time of year, when the worms are all too deep in the ground for the rook’s beak to reach them. It is wheat they are really after, and as rooks go in very large flocks, which may even darken the sky in their flight, you can easily understand that such reapers make short work of their harvest. Nor is that all: in the autumn rooks consume great quantities of walnuts and chestnuts, and in the spring they dig up potato fields to obtain the newly planted tubers.” “Couldn’t they live on dead animals, as the black crow and the raven do?” asked Louis. “No; a rook, however hungry, will not touch a dead animal. It must have seeds and fruit or larvæ and insects; and as it chooses one or the other of these kinds of food, the rook is our foe or our friend. So there are two opinions about the bird. Some persons, remembering only its thefts, would wage a relentless war against it, feeling that each rook destroyed means a bushel of wheat gained. Others, mindful chiefly of its destruction of larvæ and insects, maintain that the rook deserves kind treatment at the farmer’s hands because it rids his fields of vermin, following the plowman to pick up white worms in the furrows and plunging its sharp beak into the ground for the grubs of the June-bug. For these excellent reasons they declare the rook worthy of our protection.” “Then which of the two opinions are we to accept?” was Louis’s query. “To my thinking, neither of them, but something half-way between, as in the case of the mole. If white worms abound, let us bear with the rook, as it makes war on these enemies of ours; but if we have no need of its help, let us chase the bird from our fields. In our warfare on destructive insects we have two real helpers, the mole and the rook; but unfortunately we have to weigh their ravages against their services. Accordingly, let us treat them with forbearance if we have a worse ill to dread, but rid ourselves of their presence if our fields are in good condition.