The thunderstorm of which I write was accompanied, though the
air was very warm, with heavy hail. In some few places the ground was white as with snow. And thence another mystery. Hail has its favourite narrow belts, as most countrymen hold. During the last few weeks such hail has been peculiarly severe as well as oddly patchy in East Anglia. One field of sugar beet in Norfolk, where the crop had been planted good and early and looked most promising, was so battered and torn that you could scarcely find .a growing leaf. The field looked as if some careful market gardener had put in innumerable pegs to mark his lines. Fields near by were quite untouched, though hail has been more frequent and free this June than is often the case. It is always supposed by keepers, and doubtless with accuracy, that the June thunderstorm is the severest of all dangers to the young coveys. In my experience they have suffered sur- prisingly little this June ; and I imagine the reason to be that almost all the storms were short, many of them more like an April shower than a real thunderstorm.
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