COUNTRY LIFE
The Apple of the Moment
We enjoy things in their season, and at present I am ready to maintain that no apple on the list is better than St. Everard. One must, of course, bow to the claims of Cox and the rare Ribston, but St. Everard has the consistency of a Cox, a large share in its savour and is of an agreeable size and colour. It is certainly not known so widely as it ought to be known. It is healthy and at least a fair bearer. Some wonderful apples have been bred more or less lately, but it takes years to discover whether they will become "good market apples." There is no reason why the owner of an uncommercial orchard should wait on this rather elusive market quality. Cox has his new rivals, as well as the old Ribston from which he was bred. I should put St. Everard as one, and beyond all question Ellison's Orange, though it is not such a good keeper, is another. An apple of which the market expects much is the Monarch, a rival to Bramley's Seedling. It is reckoned at present that about 70 per cent. of the apples grown commercially in Kent are Bramley's. Its greasy protective skin, its keeping qualities, its size and not least its regular and free-bearing qualities compose virtues that have raised it above all competitors among " cookers." The Monarch has all these qualities and a fairer complexion. Some of the trees at this moment are a treat to see. Will Bramley, like Cox, admit a rival ?
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The Influence of Grass In a commercial orchard belonging to a small-holder (who gave up his work as a cricket professional for the sake of his orchards) is a tree of another market favourite which illus- trates a queer scientific fact. It is a Lord Derby, which bears fruit so big that a single apple is apt to weigh a whole pound. These giants from the most vigorous trees are wont to be a vivid green with little or no intrusion of any other tint, even in years when the sunshine is hot and plentiful. Put a tree in the midst of grass instead of dug land and the fruit altogether changes colour. The apple grows pinkish instead of green, and is probably rather smaller. The blush is a symptom of slightly reduced vitality due to the competi- tion of the roots with the grasses. That famous F.R.S., Mr. Spenser Pickering, who tried for years to penetrate the secret of this behaviour in apples, used to show one tree on which he could colour the fruit to his choice. It acquired a certain redness as soon as a covering of grass was brought within the circumference of the boughs, and the redness deepened as the grass neared the trunk. I grant that in a green apple such redness marks lowered vitality ; but I do not know whether the converse would hold, and a naturally red apple lose some of its redness on the approach of the grass.
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Infectious Weeds This small fruit farm is side by side with another that has been much neglected these many years. It remains unpruned and, what is worse, unsprayed, with the result that many of the diseases to which apples are prone are distributed among more careful and scientific neighbours. So, in the same neighbourhood, are farms afforested with thistles and ragwort which either remain uncut or if cut are allowed to mature their seed on the ground. They are cut too late and left lying. The flying seeds of these officially " noxious weeds " people neighbouring farms. It should not be possible for such idle cultivators to infect their neighbours' property. Few reforms in agriculture and horti- culture are more necessary than a more drastic adminis- tration of the Noxious Weeds Act and the extension of the principle embodied in that Act to other enemies of good cultivation. A, bad neighbour should be forced into con- sideration for a good neighbour. In these matters he can be.
• * * .* Animal Preservation
It was remarkable in the latest report of that admirable society whose object is the preservation of the fauna of the Empire that the only danger mentioned was the mongoose in the West Indies. It seems that naturalisation is at least as much to be feared' as indiscriminate destruction. How very many are the examples 1 In England we have the little owl, brought from Spain by Lord Lilford, the grey squirrel
(brought to Woburn by the Duke of Bedford and elsewhere by others) ; the musk rat, which had already undermined and indeed quite destroyed the strength of canal banks in Austria and Hungary. The little barking deer or Muntjac did a deal of damage, though its numbers were very small, to market. garden crops in Bedfordshire. If it were not killed off the Amherst pheasant would do much harm to other varieties. A few too ardent hunting officers inflicted the fox on Aust ralia, and its ravages, which are serious, are often forgotten in the superior menace of the imported rabbit. The importation of plants and bugs—some of set purpose, some accidental--has done incalculable mischief. It is high time that all or any importation of a new beast or plant should be most strictly regulated. Such importation may be most beneficial—no one wishes to expel from England the Mongolian pheasant or the larch—but it is only the expert who should decide what is certainly good, what possibly dangerous.
Roosting Attitudes A controversy rages in a newspaper published in Boston, U.S.A., on the subject of roosting birds. One naturalist asserted that all birds always sleep with the head under the wing, as the nursery rhyme reports of the robin, poor thing, in cold weather. A more careful observer, though avoiding the use of always and never, maintains that the habit of birds is to put their heads under the long feathers that conceal the upper joint of the wing. The head is outside the wing. The question is more easily settled by aviculturists than field observers. Do canaries, love-birds, doves, parrots, all practise the same attitude, and what is it ? For myself I do not think that I ever saw a bird put his head under his wing ; and my memory of the silhouette of birds seen roosting at night is that many of them do not put their heads under anything, though undoubtedly the head generally rests against the shoulder. I imagine that birds in Britain behave in this regard in very much the same way as birds in America. Authorities at the Zoos should be able to settle the controversy. There is certainly no universal habit. An owl does not do the same as a canary.
• Dilatory Migrants
A dweller in East Norfolk saw the swallows and the martins disappear at the beginning of the third week of September, but found the birds, especially martins, very plentiful in Hertfordshire a few days later. They have given few signs towards the south and west of moving off. This autumnal migration is a very desultory business compared with the often sharp definitions of the spring movements when more important things than warmth and comfort are in prospect. Some of the now famous storks, brought up in Kent for the sake of research into migratory instincts, flew south in the orthodox manner and then returned to the neighbourhood of their earlier home. It is at least possible that other birds so change their mind ; they certainly do not go straight ahead, but wait on the weather and the supplies of food. We all have seen plover, fieldfare and especially redwing driven south in hordes by severe cold in winter ; and, though less obviously, weather so influences the birds that leave us on the edge of the frosty months.
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Local Trees That idealistic, sometimes almost mystic body, the Men of the Trees, has devised an ingenious scheme for commemo- rating the Coronation. The proposal is to plant a succession of groups of trees all the way from Land's End to John o' Groats. Each group is to consist of nine trees of different sorts. Each group will contain an oak and the rest will be selected, according to the dictates of soil and climate, and sweet chestnut, mountain ash, beech and hornbeam are to be planted where possible. The scheme will need a deal of organising, and tree-lovers in all the counties en route are to be mobilised. The Society (whose address is 10 Victoria Street, S.W.1) are to produce in October a magazine of their own; -tinder the title Trees ; and an exhibition of tree portraits, ,so to say, will be held at the Garden Club from November 5th to 8th.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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