"
The writer attributes this alarming increase of rooks to "a desire on
the part of gentlemen to cause them to be preserved with the same
watchfulness they do their game." The most effectual means of deterring
the rook from their depredations, is, he says, "to obtain several of
these birds at a period of the year when they can be more easily taken;
then cut them open, and preserve them by salt. In the spring, during the
seed time, these rooks are to be fastened down to the ground with their
wings spread, and their mouths extended by a pebble, as if in great
torture. This plan has been found so effectual, that even in the
vicinity of large preserves, the fields where the dead birds have been
so placed, have not been visited by a single rook."
The scarcity of the rook in France, and the antipathy which the French
have to that bird is thus accounted for:--
"The fact has been often related by a very respectable Catholic Priest,
who resided many years at Chipping-hill, in Witham, that such was the
arbitrary conduct of the owners of abbeys and monasteries in France, in
preserving and cultivating the rook and the pigeon, that they increased
to such numbers as to become so great a pest, as to destroy the seed
when sown, and the young plants as soon as they appeared above the
ground; insomuch, that the farmer, despairing of a reward for his
labour, besides the loss of his seed, the fields were left barren, and
the supply of bread corn was, in consequence, insufficient to meet the
necessities of so rapidly increasing a people.
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