COUNTRY LIFE
Ingenious Meals Hunger, if not necessity, is the mother of inventiveness. As scon as snow or frost covers up or shuts off supplies of food rah birds and beasts find out new devices, or, it may be, take to new forms of food. More than one example has been observed during the latest bout, which has been felt more than the earlier because a total clearance was then made of easily available berries. Field mice have migrated from their proper haunts to houses and outbuildings. In one instance the attraction was a sack of stored beetroot, which was dis- covered by at least a dozen of these mice. Squirrels, as I hear, have become casual scavengers. A vivid story is told me of a rook that, after long practice, succeeded in pulling up to its precarious perch a piece of hanging fat; and most of us have perhaps watched unusual birds contriving to get a peck or two at the tits' larder.
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