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Show Shoe crows a Illinois Tanner Tells How These Birds, Usually Regarded as Pests, Saved a Corn Crop, DWEKS RECTIFY A MISTAKE. be Crow Is Not a Velvet Throated Song-ster. Song-ster. but He Gets There Just -the Same. ,!go Herald. "There is one place in the world where foffg, those old time enemies of the ,nne'r, are the petted and spoiled dar-jof dar-jof whole diet"0." said a man ith a g00 si2ed wart on 108 nose anl je air of substantial rural landowner. The locality I epeak of is Ashmore rove, in Edgar county, Ills., and the irtounding country. About a score of ears ago there were there no larger umber of crows than in other parts of ,e jtjte. But at that time these birds iddenly began to arrive in droves, here seemed to be no end to them. Still iev came, and one could not take a step efore one's own door without hearing ie rasping, gutteral cry of these birds. "ONE OEAND MEESTECK." "jfow the soil of Ashmore Grove and 3 around is heavy, fertile, black and amy, and the average yield per acre as at that time about sixty bushels of irn. The farmers naturally jumped to ie conclusion that this influx of crows is dne to the fertile soil and to the ,undance of corn. They believed that ie crows were there just to eat up all ie grains of corn that were intrusted to other earth at seed time, and that they nnld again resume their robber work xrat harvest time. That seemed quite a iraral supposition, didn't it, gentle-,en? gentle-,en? "Well, it so happened that the fanners Ashmore Grove finally lost all patience ith this crow infliction. War was de-ared de-ared against them war to the knife, campaign of extermination was opened i against them. Men, women and chil-?n chil-?n all turned out, were divided into 1 rtle guerrilla bands of from four to ten, id then the work of wholesale slaughter :jan. All sorts of weapons were used, ii only shotguns and slungshots, but to bows and arrows, stones, fire, poison id traps. Groups of trees on which ows used to spend the night were lrned down. In fact it was a sort of , Bartholomew's night for the crows of jgar county. The upshot was, of liirse, that mighty few crows remained ive to tell the tale of how they had en treated by the younger generation, he few that had been overlooked in ft sought pastures new. ' But, gentlemen, we were off badly f. We had made, as the Frenchman id, 'one grand meesteck.' For that me year there came a new plague over i The formers began to notice a hith-to hith-to unknown sort of weevil, or worm, lis blamed little nuisance not only ap-sred ap-sred in masses all over, but it was soon need that it ate np the roots of the ung com plant, thereby destroying it mpletely, and afterward it tackled in tho grass in the meadows arid ate at up. The damage done by this tiny mature was a hundredfold worse than I the damage done by the crows. But fse two separate facts were at that ue not coupled by the farmers, who, the contrary, still continued to kill off I tha crows they could see anywhere. 4 summer, gentlemen, the yield of m in Ashinoro Grove sank from sixty ten bushels per acre, and that in spite the fact that the weather had been ex-ptionally ex-ptionally favorable to the corn crop. COREICTCXa THFJB EEEOR. ' Just about this time people began to lect a little bit. The consequence was s conviction that tho large influx of "ra in the spring had been solely due the very appearance of this weevil, ich to the crows waa a dainty morsel, it as a Blue Point oyster is to you or - This conviction gained adherenta ry rapidly, and at last the fanners felt mad at themselves for chasing away murdering all the crows their best fads that they could have kicked ve3. Ho w to get the crows back? at was now the conundrum. At last xneral meeting was held. Everybody twelve miles around Ashmore Grove there, and the resolution was unani-" unani-" carried to import as many thou-'as thou-'as of crows as could be got- . A num-' num-' of reliable men were selected for the Tley went down to the Wabash river "'try, which is the richest in crows in 1 whole world, and there they organ-J. organ-J. with the help of the resident farm- grand etill hunt for crows. With- week the delegation returned to Ash's Ash-'s Grove with several thousand crows, uusk these imprisoned birds were let se,and as thoy did not fly .far during Nght, they generally spent the hours 'wn on the tops of neighboring trees, "morning they took a good survey ae found it to their liking, and (hided to stay. They at once went ' digging up the little weevils by the "Wand feasting on them. And as ? Wore, so this time as well. iow crows arrived, thousands and 'ads of them. And the confidence te'l in them was not disappointed. 'all there was again a large corn P m Ashmore Grove, and within four 18 "w yield had come back tq the old "-sixty bushels per acre, And the - Well, thousands of them stayed . several seasons longer, but it waa f uticeable how their number went greasing steadilv, and in the same 10 t wliich the yield of com became larger and larger. - , fact waa rightfully ascribed to nrcumstance that the weevils were ;fflS scarcer and scarcer, and there-; there-; supply of delicacies for the bird anally giving out, and their main ? w frequenting the neighborhood -aunore Grove waa also disappearing, "ere are still enough crows in that '-thousands and thousands of Tney are the pets of everybody. ; joy as much immunity against and trap and interference as the ,of..s.t- Mark's square do in |