SEPTEMBER. 
A PROBLEM IN BLACK. 
FoR days and weeks the wind had blown 
over the land steadily, and there was 
no rain, and—what was a poor rook to do? 
He was a digger by trade, a digger after 
worms, after fat grubs that spoil farmers’ 
crops, after the dreaded wireworm, and such- 
like plagues ; but—-what would you do? One 
must live somehow. 
Heavily he flew to the field where the 
mangel-wurzels grew—he and _half-a-dozen 
fellows. The ground in the mangel-wurzel 
field was as hard as iron, and the rook’s ham- 
mering beak flew back from it with a jar that 
ran painfully throughout his frame. 
The leaves of the root-crop were limp and 
sapless, seared and bitten by innumerable flies. 
True, the wagtails were making great capital 
out of the state of affairs, darting about and 
catching the flies, and packing them into 
pellets like currants to feed their young, who, 
though all as big as themselves, followed them 
about hungrily. But he was no acrobatic 
wagtail, and the number of flies he contrived 
