'COUNTRY LIFE

Unproductive Summer

June-like days were a very long time in coming ; and the coldnesses of May had some unhappy results. A number of birds of all sorts deserted their nests ; but the chief examples were among pheasants. On one preserved estate nest after nest was deserted before the full clutch was laid ; and of the six or seven eggs left in these nests an unusual number were found to be infertile. A particular and very curious experience was the discovery of a French partridge's nest with one egg only. This was deserted. A little later in the same hedgerow at no great distance another French partridge's nest with one egg only was found ; and this too was deserted. The unwonted cold seems somehow or other to have quite upset the instinctive habits of the bird.

Graft Hybrids

A cardboard box reached me this week containing a spray of laburnum flower, with yellow florets on one side and brown on the other. This curiosity of botany has often been described but never scientifically explained. The variety Adami is a graft hybrid so called. Its makers are the procumbent broom and the common laburnum, both, of course, leguminous. For some reason never adequately explained the two behave very much as crossed seeds may behave in the second generation. Different flower-offspring appear ; some yellow, some brown, some a brown-yellow mixture. Brooms seem to be unusually eccentric. I have one in my garden that has relapsed to yellow (though it retains some of the characteristics of the hybrid) over the greater part of the bush, but keeps one bough still very floriferous with the original brown-yellow mixture of tints. The tendency to relapse to a primal ancestor is a continual distress to gardeners. One of the plants peculiarly prone to this unhappy tendency is the Penzance briar.

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Bird Prognostics

Men have always deduced omens from the behaviour of birds, and in spite of scientific weather forecasts by wireless our country people still read signs of change in the behaviour of animals. A sign new to me is sent from near Oxford, where the tapping of woodpeckers early in the morning is taken as a not less sure indication of coming rain than the low flight of swallows. It is not stated whether the prophet is of the green or spotted variety. There is, I should say from my own experience, no doubt at all that an increase of moisture in the air wets the whistle of many birds, especially the thrushes ; and it may of course affect the spirits of the mechanised woodpeckers. Sensitiveness to thunder certainly marks the pheasant. They were very merry the other day on the approach of a thunderstorm—is this usual ? Whether they hear thunder before we do or are sensitive to some change in the air or aether is quite beyond conjecture. One would expect so sensitive a being as a bird, whose very bones are especially adapted for holding air, to be much more nicely aware of air changes than the rest of us, though possibly insects, with their many more superficial nerve centres, may surpass even the birds.

* * * * Pig and Zoo

It is surely a new thing in journalism that an official Board should produce a special monthly magazine with an assured circulation of 40,000. This is the number of regis- tered " pig producers " in North Ireland ; and each is to receive a copy of the new Pig Progress. They are persuaded in North Ireland, as long since in South Ireland, that the pig is " the gentleman that pays the rent" ; and the country is in a fair way to rival Denmark. Though it does not rival the subtle alliteration of Pig Progress, another specialist magazine of a new sort possesses a singularly attractive name. The monosyllable is congenial to our language, and we rejdice in abbreviations ; so Zoo_ will have a welcome as soon as its title is known. It should be full of bright news, both popular and scientific, in sympathy with the literary work of its Director. If the popularity of the Zoo (which beat all its own records at Whitsuntide) is any earnest of the popularity of Zoo, its circulation should exceed even that of Pig Progress.

Hungry Foxes Is it a very hungry year ? Not from one place but from a number, especially Cumberland and Co. Fermanagh, accounts have reached me of the killing of lambs by foxes: The fox, imported by too ardent fox-hunters into Australia, is a constant menace to the lambs—triste lupus stabulis—and on some stations lambs appear to be . their chief prey. In general lambs have been tolerably safe in Britain ; though occasional losses from foxes and even badgers have befallen in most counties. The losses this year in the north-western counties have been wholesale. It is to be hoped that the, fox is not changing its habits, as are some of .the birds. We used to think the black-headed gull wholly beneficial, but of late it has been imitating the herring gull and the much more rapacious black-backed gull on some Scottish moors. There is some evidence that foxes are increasing with some rapidity in a good many districts, especially in woodlands and on the moors. One class of logician, much satirised by Mr. A. P. Herbert, used to argue that the fox-hunt was justified if only because it ensured the preservation of the fox. - Today it is chiefly where the hunt is least operative that the fox seems to be multiplying.

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Rabbit-Proof Plants

On the subject of destructive animals, a number of enquiries have reached me as to rabbit-proof plants. Rabbits and hares doubtless have their preferences. They will devour the carnations and the pyrethrums and young cabbage plants before they go on to less attractive fare ; but the list of foods that they will not eat when the shoots are young and soft is a very small one. They do not like petunias and avoid as a rule most of the plants with strong essential oils, especially the camomile tribe. Even wire is no certain preventive. I have known a rabbit use the top of a defensive wire net as a stand from which to eat the tender upper shoots of a rare and precious fir.

Squirrel or Rat?

Depredation is a wide subject. Here is another very modern instance : on the borders of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, where the grey squirrel is particularly numerous and omnivorous, the residents believe that two quite distinct animals are at large, one a true squirrel, the other more like a rat. They vary in colour, and one has a tail that is much less bushy, indeed sometimes is not ,bushy at all except at the tip. Grey squirrels differ a good deal in colour and their winter coat is very much darker than their summer. Their enemies, who are many, call them all " tree rats " ; but that two species or even distinct . varieties are found in England I should doubt. A good example of the colour differences of animals has been disclosed in Merioneth since the polecat revived there. Quite a fair number with a bright red pelt have been killed—and preserved ; and a very handsome animal the red variety is. Further information on variations in the grey squirrel would be welcome.

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A Better Alien An organised effort is being made by one set of ornithologists to whitewash that other imported animal, the little owl. Mr. Lockley has given a grim account of the havoc wrought by a pair om that most lovely bird, the stormy petrel, which breeds owl-like in the holes of walls on our western island•. On the other hand, a Cambridge investigator records the fantastic number of pincers (once carried by earwigs) that were found by the little owls' nest ; and that most- scientific of investigators, Mr. Collinge, confirms the belief that the little owl is first and foremost an eater of beetles and' therefore of good service to farmer and gardener. Who shall decide ? But we must remember that this most intelligent of birds waS. observed by Sir George Courthope and others to -slaughtf.r young birds not for the sake of their flesh but for the burying beetles that their poor little bodies attracted. The owls di l not return to their kill till the beetles got to work. The strange tale was fully corroborated- in successive years on the