Kalm's account of his visit to England : on his way to America in 1748 / translated by Joseph Lucas ; with two maps and several illustrations.

  • Pehr Kalm
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Kalm's account of his visit to England : on his way to America in 1748 / translated by Joseph Lucas ; with two maps and several illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    crow called by zoologists Cornix frugilega, and by the in- habitants of the island of Öland off the coast of Sweden, Roka. (See Linn. Fauna Svecica). 1 hey had built their nests up in the highests summits, skatan, of elms, oaks, and other lofty leaf trees, where no one could get at them. There were often seen in a single treeten, twelve, sixteen, twenty, and more such nests, bon, all made this year. There was therefore constantly, but especially in the mornings early such screeching, skrik, in these trees that one could scarcely hear what another person said if they were standing near the trees. These birds, Kreatur, did the “ farmers ” or agriculturist, Landt- m arm en, an incredible amount of harm, for as soon as wheat, barley, oats, pease, or, in a word, whatever kind of crop there might be was sown, they covered the fields and plucked up, plåckade up, as much as they could get at. When the pease were sown, which was nearly all done by the drill, or in rows, and began to peep up, there were the rooks collected in large numbers. They began to follow along the rows [T. I. p. 175] in which the pease were sown, and pulled up, ryckte up, all they could find, so that not many of the peas were left. I saw a farmer who had this spring sown a large field with pease which were so entirely destroyed by these destruc- tive birds that he was obliged to plough it up and sow it again with oats, because scarcely a single pea was left remaining. Scare-crows, Fogel-scrämslor, were set up in the fields, but could not frighten them, kunde icke injaga någon räddhoga i dem. Many might think because they always had their nests in trees near villages, that it was not difficult either to shoot them there dead, up in the trees, or to destroy their nests, or to climb up in the trees and poke down their nests with long poles, or in some other way to prevent their increasing in nuinbers. To this it is answered : “ Certainly, sir, if one
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