Country Life
FARMERS' COURAGE.
I spent several days lately in a part of the country where the bed plight of the folk is most marked, where the population goes steadily down and down. In a group of seven villages the clergy have been reduced by three and three rectories are either sold or let. The chief reason of this reduction is not the poverty of the Church, but the smallness of the congre- gations. In place of possible congregations of 2,000 the maximum is 800 at most ; and I should say the percentage of old people quite above the normal. The cultivators are still valorously fighting a rear-guard action. They still hold the stronger places, that is the fields where the soil is better, but they have retreated from the fields that were of lower quality. One must know a place very intimately to see the precision of this process. In one parish four scattered fields, known long ago as stubborn, are now more like brakes than paddocks. They are being eaten up by the wild briar, the blackberry and the thorn. I have heard people express sur- prise that the briar and the blackberry are regarded as among the worst weeds in Tasmania and New Zealand. Indeed, our agricultural stations have been asked to discover a cure. If their wonder contain any particle of incredulity they need motor only some fifty odd miles out of London to find fields wholly occupied by these enemies, which follow inevitably the retreat of the farmer here as in the Antipodes.
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