WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 201 



the hardiest of forest dwellers, collect in large 

 flocks and associate with the stronger-beaked 

 rooks. The sable legions fly from field to field, 

 and by unremitting labour among the furrows — 

 labour directed by shrewdness and intelhgence 

 — manage in places to tear up the ground and 

 obtain the necessaries of life. The cushats watch 

 the resourceful rooks, and in the fresh-turned 

 earth find here and there some welcome morsel 

 rejected by their companions. But the wood- 

 pigeon is no longer the plump, fleet- winged bird 

 that filled the summer wood with soft and cease- 

 less cooing. Wasted by privation to a mere bag 

 of bones covered with feathers, it wearily wings 

 its way to the home meadows, and there alights 

 to pick a meal from the turnips provided by the 

 farmer for his hungry sheep. 



By the river-side, the water-vole, as well as 

 the pigeon, discovers in the ubiquitous rook a 

 friend. The rook is a keen entomologist. Pon- 

 derous books would not suffice to contain all 

 the knowledge of insect life possessed by the 

 tribe-father of the rookery on the hill. In the 

 mysteries of pupa-digging, college professors are 

 as novices compared with the ploughboy's black 

 attendant. Every tree in summer sheltered 

 amid its leaves a hundred little families of 

 promising caterpillars, destined, if fate were pro- 

 pitious, to develop into delicate, soft-winged 



