COUNTRY LIFE
Ir is a proverbial creed that April showers make May flowers ; but after one of the least showery of remembered Aprils, May flowers have opened in more than normal profusion. Every flowering thing seems to have excelled itself, especially in my neighbourhood the pears and currant,. Last autumn I put in some small currant cuttings, and today the three or four inches that are above the surface are tasseled with blossom, an almost ludicrous spectacle. The spring has not been so forward as was at one time feared ; but the May blossom, which sometimes, like the Mayfly, dawdles till June, opened a few petals in April, and both pear and plum flowers had visibly set when May entered. With me, it was necessary to put a storey on to one of the beehives, so many and busy were the swarm. Weeks ago a Louise Bonne pear tree was as noisy as any lime tree in June with the " murmuring of innumerable bees," a very rare chorus at such a date.. Not flower only is profuse. Some of the autumn-sown grain crops, both oats and wheat, have become such bushy, well-tillered plants that they have quite filled the corridors between the drills. There is many a slip—but we can at least feel that the " conditions precedent " to much fruit, much grain have been graciously accorded by our ignorantly criticised climate.
Noisy Signals It was the experience of a relation of mine who had a strange passion for punt-gunning, a sport he pursued chiefly to the North of Ireland, that as soon as his gun, his cannon, was fired, the gulls, especially the black- backed, used to flock to the place, and they would at once fall upon any wounded duck. A more pleasing gull obeys a less resounding signal in order to fall on as unlamented quarry: the black-headed gull, the species that especially favours London and its neighbourhood, at once assemble on certain fields (about twenty miles north of London) when the noisy tractor begins to rumble, and behind it they fall in, devouring every grub that is exposed. So eager are they that fear of man and his machines are quite eliminated. I know of one instance in which a gull was ploughed under, so close it followed, and it would have been buried alive had not the ploughman seen the white points of the 'wings on his next round._ Wonted sounds lose their terror. On a Berkshire rifle-shooting range I have seen pheasants walk under the bullets while the young marksmen, greatly tempted by the live targets, were practising.
An Appropriate Date
Was it by an accident or from a sense of fitness that a demonstration of cultivation under cloches (at Chertsey, Surrey) was held on May 12th and 13th, which are the name-days of two of the three " Ice Saints " whose ill-reputation is spread all over Europe? Tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers and sweet corn are some of the vegetables whose cultivation under portable glass was demonstrated.
Failure of the Water Supply
The comparative failure of the water supply has curiously affected life in some of the rivers. For some reason, possibly the accumulation of mud banks, which are detested by fish, the fish, at any rate the fine fish, have refused to ascend the stream. In one case they do not now approach within three-quarters of a mile a mill which was once a very favourite haunt. The trout seemed desirous of ascending yet higher. In some of the chalk streams, notably those that spring from the Chilterns, the upper reaches may totally disappear as the water-level in the chalk lowers. In old days, indeed as little as twenty years ago, the millers used to send a horse and harrow down the stream to clear the mud and excess of weed. Some of the oldest of those mills are again in operation ; and it will be a good thing for the rivers, as well as the locality, if their revival means a new lease of life.
In My Garden The organisers of an experimental farm in my neighbourhood have spent £6 an ounce for the seed of certain bush tomatoes, which are the present rage, and they promise well. The seed even of more 'ordinarY sorts is only less dear. This high price suggests the value of saving seed. Some that my household have saved—by pure accident—suggest• a method of saving that is not usually practised. A very small pumpkin was left on a kitchen shelf and cut open, "merely for wantonness," in mid-April. It was at once seen that nearly all the seeds had germinated vigorously. They were planted out in a cold greenhouse, and are already good little plants ready for a second transplantation out of doors. W. BEACH THOMAS.
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