The Arizona champion., 1891-03-21
SAVED BY THE CROWS.
Once the BenefaetorS of Ash
 more Grove.
HOW THE BIRDS SAVED THE CORN CROP
The Illinois Agriculturists Rectify a
 Mistake.

lings of whole district" said a man with a good sized wart on his nose and the air of substantial rural landowner. "The locality speak of is Ashmore Grove, in Edgar county, nls., and the surrounding country. About score of years ago there were there no larger number of crows than in other parts of the state But at that time these birds suddenly began to arrive in droves. There seemed to be no end to them. Still they came, and one could not take 8 step before ones own door without hearing the rasping, gutteral cry of these birds.
 LONE GRAND MEESTECK."
 "Now the soil of Ashmore Grove and all around is heavy, fertile, black and loamy, and the average yield per acre was at that time about sixty bushels of corn. The farmers naturally jumped to the conclusion that this influx of crows was due to the fertile soil and to the abundance of corn. They believed that the crows were there just to eat up all the grains of corn that were intrusted to mother earth at seed time, and that they would again resume their robber work about harvest time. That seemed quite a natural supposition, didn't it, gentle men?
 "Well, it so happened that the farmers of Ashmore Grove finally lost all patience with this crow infiction. War was de- clared against them-war to the knife A campaign of extermination was opened up against them. Men, women and chil- dren all turned out, were divided into little guerrilla bands of from four to ten, and then the work of wholesale slaughter began. All sorts of weapons were used, not only shotguns and slungshots, but even bows and arrows, stones, fire, poison and traps. Groups of trees on which crows used to spend the night were burned down. In fact it was a sort of St. Bartholomew's night for the crows of Edgar county. The upshot was, of course, that mighty few crows remained alive to tell the tale of how they had been treated by the younger generation. The few that had been overlooked in fact sought pastures new.
 ''But, gentlemen, we were off-badly off. We had made, as the Frenchman said, one grand meesteck.' For that same year there came new plague over us. The farmers began to notice hith- erto unknown sort of weevil, or worm. This blamed little nuisance not only ap- peared in masses all over, but it was soon noticed that it ate up the roots of the young corn plant, thereby destroying it completely, and afterward it tackled even the grass in the meadows and ate that up The damage done by this tiny creature was 8 hundredfold worse than all the damage done by the crows. But these two separate facts were at that time not coupled by the farmers, who, on the contrary, still continued to kill of all the crows they could see anywhere. That summer, gentlemen, the yield of corn in Ashmore Grove sank from sixty to ten bushels per acre, and that in spite of the fact that the weather had been ex- ceptionally favorable to the corn crop.
 CORRECTING THEIR ERROR.
 "Just about this time people began to reflect a little bit. The consequence was the conviction that the large influx of crows in the spring had been solely due to the very appearance of this weevil, which to the crows was dainty morsel, just as Blue Point oyster is to you or me. This conviction gained adherents very rapidly, and at last the farmers felt so mad at themselves for chasing away or murdering all the crows-their best friends-that they could have kicked themselves. How to get the crows back? That was now the conundrum. At last a general meeting was held. Everybody for twelve miles around Ashmore Grove was there, and the resolution was unani- mously carried to import as many thou sands of crows as could be got. A num- Der of reliable men were selected for the task.
 "They went down to the Wabash river country, which is the richest in crows in the whole world, and there they organ ized, with the help of the resident farm C1SJ d kl dllu BULL LO4 O1OWo- UlIu- in week the delegation returned to Ash more Grove with several thousand crows. At dusk these imprisoned birds were let loose, and as they did not fly far during the night, they generally spent the hours till dawn on the tops of neighboring trees. Next morning they took good survey of the land, found it to their liking, and concluded to stay. They at once went at it, digging up the little weevils by the million and feasting on them. And as once before, so this time as well.
 ''Now crows arrived, thousands and thousands of them. And the confidence placed in them was not disappointed. Next fall there was again large corn crop in Ashmore Grove, and within four years the yield had come back to the old figure-sixty bushels per acre. And the crows? We'll, thousands of them stayed there several seasons longer, but it was quite noticeable how their number went on decreasing steadily, and in the same ratio at which the yield of corn became annually larger and larger.
 "This fact was rightfully ascribed to the circumstance that the weevils were getting scarcer and scarcer, and there fore the supply of delcacies for the bird was gradually giving out, and their main reason for frequenting the neighborhood of Ashmore Grove was also disappearing. But there are still enough crows in that district-thousands and thousands of them. They are the pets of everybody. They enjoy as much immunity against shotn11n and iran and intarferenca as the 1