Los Angeles herald., 1890-09-09
A GOOD WORD FOR THE GROW.
He Is Mighty Cute Bird, and 1t Isn't
Easy to Fool Him.

Easy to Fool Him.
Farmer Lucius S. Clark, of North Abing
ton township, is great friend of crows.
He declares that the noisy, big birds do a
great deal more good than harm on his
place, and he never allows his sons to rob
their nests, or to shoot or trap them. Con-
sequently all the crows that nest in Farmer
Clark's woods every summer, and sail over
his broad acres at all seasons of the year,
are much tanner than those that flock on
the farms of some of his neighbors. Even
though he is kind to his big family of
crows, Farmer Clark says that the black
rascals have until this season been in the
habit of scratching up lots Of his corn as
soon as it was planted, and of pulling up
lots more shortly after it had become nicely
sprouted. Bot the cutworms and other
crawling things that the crows devoured
more than paid for the damage they did to
the corn. and that was why he cherished
the glossy birds, he said.
When corn planting time came Farmer
Clark thought he would see if he couldn't
make the crows let the corn alone after it
had been planted. He boiled a lot of tar
in large kettle, dumped his seed corn
into it and kept stirring the mass until
each kernel was completely covered with a
coating of tar, and after that he rolled the
corn in pulverized lime till it was white
He planted it the same day, and the crows
clawed few hills of it up and were in a
peck of trouble for several hours. The
cunning fellows evidently couldn't make
out what the confounded stuff was, for
they dropped the kernels as though they
were red hot bits of metal and then flew to
another part of the field and tried other
hills.
The corn didn't taste right to any of the
crows, and after they had sampled hills
here and there the whole flock met at a
back corner Of the lot and had a noisy dis
cussion over the mystery. In the course
of half an hour one of the crows sailed
away, alighted on hill scratched into it
and suddenly started back to where it's
companions were sitting silently on the
fence, yelling out the information on the
way that it was the same nasty stuff as the
rest Then the whole flock jawed as tight
as they could for minute or so, when
another crow sailed forth to different Sec
ton of the field, tackled hill, took ker-
mel in it's bill, elected it mighty quick and
flew over to the fence with the same dis
| gusting report. For two hours the crows
! took turns at investigating, finally came
| to the conclusion that they had been un-
mercifully fooled and went cawing away
to the woods on the hillside. Farmer
Clark had watched them all the time, and
he declared that the crows let that field en-
tirely alone from then on.
In another patch the men planted two
rows with corn that had not been coated
with tar and lime. The rows were ter
rods apart, and the cunning crows un
earthed every hill in each row and gobblet
up every kernel of corn, but they didn't
touch single hill of the intervening rows
where the tarred corn was. Farmer CLARK
said that their eye teeth had been cut il
the former field, and that the birds were
too sharp to be led into the same painful
experience again. Plain corn was planted
in the two rows the second time, and tn,
crows scratched it all up the next day
Then the men put beans in the corn hills
and the beans were not disturbed by tn,
black rascals.
Another strange thing about the be
havior of Farmer Clark's flock of crow
was noticed by the watchful farmer whel
the cultivator was run between the row
of corn for the first time. In the latte
field dozens of crows followed the cultiva
tor and picked up hundreds of cutworms
When the farm hand turned his hors
about the flock rose up and flew to tn
fence, but as soon as he got well started ol
his way to the other end of the lot the
settled down few rods behind him an,
resumed their work.-Scranton Pa.) Cor
New York Sun