Excerpt from Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, 1915, Vol. 15 In the autumn of 1860 large flocks of blackbirds, such as I think were never since seen in this country, attacked the corn crops and destroyed much corn. This was general over all southwestern Minnesota. It is no exaggeration whatever, when I say that dense flocks would consume an entire day and even longer in flying over a given point. The state offered forty cents per hundred for their heads, many were poisoned, but apparently no benefit was accomplished. The same year sandhill cranes were so numerous, voracious, and bold, that they could scarcely be driven from the fields. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.