COUNTRY LIFE
AT Oxford some while ago a more or less individual enquiry was set afoot into the vagaries of our population of four-footed animals. Some quaint results were reached especially as to periodic ups and downs. Mice seem to be singularly regular in ascending to and descending from their maximum. Grey squirrels were more than decimated in the early 'thirties, blit expectations—and hopes—that this might happen again have not been fulfilled, while the red squirrel has steadily diminished. This enquiry has helped forward a sort of revolution in academic zoology. Field studies are henceforth to take their place in the schools: The new Department of Zoological Field Studies is to embrace both the Bureau of Animal Population and the most excellent Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, though both these will continue their individuality. Apart from these, which are more or less new, the Hope Department for the Study of Insects was the first university institution of its sort. Oxford is a good centre for such studies topographically, a rich centre for the study of birds and flowers and insects, if not of mammals. How charmingly some dons have written on such field sub- jects, above all that great Vergilian, Warde Fowler.
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