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 intelligence 

 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 



