3 DECEMBER 1948, Page 14

Rural Psychology In the latest humble little typewritten bulletin of

the excellent County Garden Produce Central Committee (fathered by the Ministry) appears a sort of potted account of the work of Mr. Rollo Myer as a country parson. It is all very interesting, for he was, and is, a pioneer in various forms of the organisation of village produce ; but a much wider public is concerned with his skill and persistence as a maker of new flowers, of which no details are given. I do not know that any individual or amateur achievement is more remarkable, than his extraction of a Cam- bridge blue from the Oxford blue of the dwarf Iris ,Reticulata ; and that is not his only triumph in this direction. As to his agricultural -successes, the chief depends on a psychological subtlety. He started a Credit Society (which enabled energetic horticulturalists to climb to greater things). It was so arranged that if any man defaulted the other members had to repay his loan. As a result there were no bad debts. "A man may not mind owing money to a shop, but if his neighbours have to pay his debts he is certain, in a village, to meet one of them every time he goes out. Therefore such loans were always repaid, for life otherwise would have become unendurable." Such, I believe, has been the common experience in both Belgium and Denmark.