COUNTRY LIFE

A Dreaded Date The Coronation fell on the feast day of one of the Drei Elm-inner, whose maleficent activities are recorded by the most famous of Austrian botanists. The festival of the three saints in the Roman Catholic Calendar is dreaded by fruit- growers in Middle Europe because, according to country lore, the last of the sharp frosts arc likely to occur ; and of all events in the rural calendar of England as of Austria, none does more harm than such a May frost. It may almost wipe out the prospective apple crop and indeed the strawberry crop. This year, in spite of its many deficiencies, has been admirably free from destructive frosts.

Estate Woodlands A very sage thing or two is written by the Duke of Buccleuch in the brief preface to a pamphlet on Estate Woodlands pro- duced by the Royal English Forestry Society. Estate manage- ment is a ducal subject : no one has written better sense on land questions in general than the Duke of Montrose, though the Treasury does not approve of him in his strong support of the most sensible view that the Government should be willing to take land in lieu of death duties. They possess the permissive privilege to do this ; and if it were exercised we should arrive at a progressive system of the nationalisation of land.

The area under trees in Britain is still short of the estimates of 1914 by at least 20,000 acres—this in spite of the wide operations of the Forestry Commission in many counties and in districts differing as widely as the edges of Breckland in Norfolk and Suffolk and the hills of the Lake Country. Their activities on the whole have been wise and welcome in spite of some local sins against the character of the district, as in Breckland, where a unique plant and bird sanctuary was invaded, in the Lake Country where extreme regularity of pattern was resented, and in the New Forest where there has been an outcry against the extreme passion for conifers. The Commission has striven to fill the gap caused by the wholesale destruction of trees for the necessary purposes of war. It endeavours to add to the sum of useful trees. At the same time the owners of estates, in spite of a good many small spasmodic efforts at afforestation, waste their woodlands most lamentably. The author:ties of Crown Lands may be reckoned among the estate owners in this regard.

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Decayed Woodlands

It happens that I walked last week in some very charac- teristic bits of woodland in the Midlands and in the West of England. They were full of trees than were far past their best, and some of the owners boast proudly of the crime of never cutting a tree down. Such owners are usually also in the class of those who never plant a young tree, and so encourage rabbits that no natural seedling (especially if it is an ash) has a chance of survival. These groves were full also of trees that damaged one another and of trees that would have had a high value if they had received any attention. Value consists often in the length of straight trunk ; and for want of the simple lopping of superfluous boughs thousands of trees that would have been worth, say, twenty pounds apiece are not worth twenty shillings.

Wasted Wealth The sins of most estate owners are sins of omission, and thereby less heinous than the sins of commission (not of the Commission) perpetrated by developers—save the mark !- and farmer-owners. At a certain age—say, when it comes of age—a hardwood tree begins to grow into value very rapidly. Its girth and height increase at an enhanced rate. It puts on value visibly. When such a tree is felled at the beginning of this period, national wealth is grievously wasted. Thousands of acres have been so felled, often by farmers who have bought their farms and need quick money. A precious national investment has been sacrificed and ducks and drakes played with the national capital, with the national reserve. So it has come about that the pulling down proceeds at an equal rate with the expensive building up. In these circumstances it is not Unnatural that those who take our supply of timber seriously should demand, like Theodore

Roosevelt, a policy of " conservation." Men should not be allowed to destroy at their will without compensating action. Proposals are that no one should be allowed to cut a tree down without a licence, that the felling of a tree should imply the planting of another and that all woodlands should be open to inspection and that certain simple methods of con- serving value, especially in the trimming of side shoots, should be enforced.

Beauty or Use

It must be confessed that the unrivalled beauty of many English woods is due to the badness of the forestry ; but there is often melancholy in the spectacle. An observance of the elemental rules of forestry would in many woods increase the charm. Few things in nature are more beautiful than clean straight pillars of trunks, of

" Column and arch and architrave and all

The tricks of art that builders learned of trees."

One wood, familiar to me—it clothes a slope above the Arrow— has lately been combed out and trimmed in obedience to the laws of good forestry. A multitude of oaks approaching the pride of age have room to grow and to show their grace. Mouldered trunks and stag-headed dotards have been cleared away. It seems to me that this treatment has added charm and grace, as it has certainly added value, apart from the large-scale planting of young oaks in the bays of the wood. Anemone, primrose, bluebell and creeping Jenny certainly flourish the more. The one drawback perhaps is that those engaging birds, the woodpecker and nuthatch, find fewer convenient nesting places.

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A Revived Heronry

It is pleasant to report that one act of destruction has had less serious effects, except to local amenities, than naturalists and natural history societies feared. The large colony of herons that were evicted from Islington in Norfolk have found agreeable homes in the neighbourhood and in the few remain. ing trees. Those who have made a careful search and attempted to compile a census of nests are inclined to believe that nests this season are rather more numerous than they were. An observer has written " A spinney of three acres about a quarter of a mile away contains at least forty new nests in which young birds were already ' clicking '. Sky-blue eggshells were sprinkled on the woodland carpet beneath the trees and I counted over thirty birds flying over the spinney or standing beside the nests." I hear of other heronries in other parts of East Anglia that are new and flourishing.

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Courageous Birds

The story was told last week of the courage of blackbirds which attacked both rats and cats when they threatened the nest. A Hampshire correspondent is a little jealous (speaking on behalf of her fly-catchers) of my blackbirds. Here is the account of their parental pluck.

" A pair of spotted fly-catchers have a nest (in which they reared two broods) on the wall of our garden-house.

JUNE 28TH.—After supper saw a young grey squirrel being chased and chivvied by a fly-catcher, which dashed several times on to the squirrel's back, pecking vigorously at its head. ' JUNE 29TH.—Early this morning, before breakfast, saw the same thing. The squirrel tearing round the lawn, this time with both fly-catchers after it, alternately dashing at it and inciting its head —till at last it took a desperate leap into a hedge.'

The squirrel was obviously terrified." • * *

A Young Botanist

The pursuit of botany seems to be increasing in our rural schools, if I may judge from my correspondence. The latest botanical query comes from a Wiltshire school. A prize is given for the recording of wild flowers found by the children. Last week one of them came upon a plant of Herb Paris which had five leaves instead of the usual four. The flower is not common, and the five-leafed variety, though recorded, is very rare. It is no small advance towards a " rural bias," of which our educational authorities talk, that so fine a point should give one of the children the reputation of being a discoverer. It is interesting to know that old Johns, a Victorian pioneer in

natural history, is their text book. W. BEACH THOMAS.