Once upon a time rooks were called crows, and as the latter had a very evil reputation, the former suffered for it. Nor is the confusion still extinct, for unfortunately there are obstinate people in the world who will not understand that it makes any difference whether they use a right name or a wrong one. It will be very long before the water-vole ceases to be called a water-rat; but until that time comes, an innocent animal will continue to be persecuted for a guilty one. So with the honest rooks. There are plenty of people who insist on calling them crows, and having given the bird a bad name proceed to hang him up as a "scare-crow" to warn his useful relatives off the field which they would otherwise rid of wire-worms and grubs. That rooks do some mischief is beyond doubt. When the ground is frost-bound, and it cannot persecute the farmer's [Illustration: CROWS AT SUNDOWN] enemies that hide in the soil, the rook will feed on turnips. When the potatoes are coming on, the rooks go down between the hills prodding in the earth for the worms and larvæ that assemble to eat the young tubers, and, it may be, eating many of them themselves. When hens' eggs are left undefended the rook will carry them off. But how very trifling such damage is as compared with the good that is done by this hard-working bird. I have myself allowed an acre of potatoes to swarm day after day with rooks, and when the crop was gathered it was a first-rate one. After that one experience, and the absolute proof of the innocence of those rooks when in my potato-field, I need hardly say that when any farmer complains, or scientist asserts, that these birds do injury to potatoes when growing, I know he is saying "the thing that is not." I have also had eggs stolen by rooks from a nest that a vagabond fowl had made for herself in the tall meadow-grass. But was the rook to blame? Certainly not. What right has a hen to go and lay her eggs in a meadow, carefully hiding them from her friends in the tall grass, but leaving them conspicuously exposed to every bird that flies over them? As for its depredation on turnips, what difference in the amount of sheep-food do the rooks' pilferings make in a twenty-acre crop? Instead of grumbling, the intelligent farmer should scatter a barrow-load or two of mangolds conspicuously over the field for the frozen-out birds to eat at their comfort and to keep them from pecking the crops.