DECEMBER. 191 



in orchard and ploughland or pasture. In one the 

 myriad moths may wreck the stillborn promise of the 

 apple crop; in the others the rooks and their allies 

 may be clearing the land of its worst pests. We 

 often laugh at the farmer because he always finds 

 something to grumble about. When his crops are 

 growing so fast that you can almost see the green 

 blades lengthening, he will say that it is " wonderful 

 weather for weeds." Yet, if you watch the small life 

 of the fields, you will see that the good and the evil 

 are so inextricably mingled, that if we could appoint 

 a committee of farmers to arrange our weather they 

 would be ruining each other half the time. 



THE FARMER AND HIS "FRIEND." 



Take the rooks, for instance. It may be a fine 

 thing now to see the stubbles or the pastures black 

 with them, and to hear the roar of their clamour, like 

 the sea on a shingly coast, as they assemble by tens 

 of thousands from the clustering farms to roost in the 

 timber of some ancient park. But when the frost 

 binds the earth, and even the rooks' hard bill cannot 

 pierce the iron furrows, what will those tens of 

 thousands do? The rook is a wise bird, and sel- 

 dom starves. Among other accomplishments, he 

 has learned the trick of catching hold of the end 

 of a straw in a corn-stack, and dangling at the end of 

 it with flapping wings till he pulls it out, with an 

 ear of corn at the end. It does not need tens of 

 thousands of rooks exhibiting this accomplishment 

 daily through a week of frost to make a respectably 

 sized hole in all the stacks of all the farms which they 



