COUNTRY LIFE A Real Market No one can understand the

West Country—so it seemed to me last week—who has not been to Barnstaple Market. There is no near parallel, so-far as I know, in Eastern England. It is eloquent of a form of cultivation as well as marketing that belongs to its own district. There is a simplicity and natural- ness about the whole affair that seem to belong to a less com- plicated civilisation than prevails elsewhere. The people bring to the market just what they have got to sell, however few or small the things may be. All down the chief corridor of the 'fine Market-hall—lit as well as an artist's studio—are spread. out for sale little collections of produce, each repre- senting a small unit of cultivation. There were raspberries and very late strawberries, vegetables of many sorts and kinds, baskets of eggs, trussed poultry and flowers of great variety and beauty ; and to collections of the more serious articles of sale would be added, in this collection and that, one little bouquet of marigolds or one half-sized rabbit. Most buyers were women armed with capacious baskets, filled up by degrees in a friendly, leisurely fashion. The goods were cheap and fresh and honestly presented, not soiled and staled by passage through a wholesale market and much handling on train or lorry.

The Potter's Wheel

Nor was this all. The entrance and some of the bays of the market-hall are well packed with local crafts. Where would you buy better baskets or better earthenware ? And the prices are apt to persuade you to buy more than you can take away ! The pottery is so attractive that you desire to see its manufacture ; and the manufacturing—being so called, for the hands, the manual work, are all important—is not many yards' distance from the market. Many tons of brown clay, so called, are carted there daily from an almost inexhaustible mine not three miles away ; and this raw material is watered and ground and kneaded and pounded and pressed by simple apparatus till it is fit to compound a watertight jar or jug. When you see at work the potter who is chief artist at the making of flower-pots you discover for the first time perhaps what a very convenient, arrangement our fingers have assumed ! The long middle finger punches a hole in the base of the flower-pot and the two on. either side give the diameter. Browning might well say "Ay ! note that potter's wheel," for it gives the most alluring of all moving pictures. Each lump of brown clay responded to the potter's touch with miraculous speed and precision.. Each pot took almost exactly fifteen seconds to assume the perfect shape. Lump after lump leapt into form at the rate of four to the minute. More artistic work than this turning out of flower-pots is done ; and some of the larger bowls have great charm of shape ; but it is the mere response of the shapeless mass to the touch of the potter's thumb and finger that gives you the sense of artistic creation. To the idle onlooker each pot is an inspiration. Its assumption of colour in the subsequent, progressive, sixty- hour drying process is a happy accident.

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A Maternal Chick

An unusual event in natural history, following a succession of tragedies, has been observed from an invalid's window at Papworth. A moorhen lost her mate while brooding her second clutch of eggs. She continued to sit but called one of the few surviving chicks to take turns on the nest, and between them the work was successfully accomplished. Moorhens will on occasion build a second nest solely for the housing of the grown chicks ; and doubtless the habit of the young to return to the nest helped to convert this youngster into an amateur parent. This mother moorhen had suffered a grim succession of calamities. She laid the usual large clutch—on a small island in a pond. Boys of the Tom Tulliver type (who was " very fond of birds," that is, of throwing stones at them) broke three eggs. When the relic eggs were hatched a murder- ous drake killed two while the moorhen was chasing away another duck. A cat killed another and a rook (or perhaps crow) pounced on another. Two only survived to maturity and one of these was the bird that took to brooding the second clutch which consisted of only three eggs. The whole story is eloquent of the struggle for life that birds have to endure.

A Nest-making Dog

I gave some account last week of a hound that dug a five foot cavity in a bank—after two days' hard work—and there trans- ferred her four puppies, and a very pretty picture the quarter made as they came to the mouth of the earth in the wake of their mother. Another rather unusual act of maternal care has occurred in the same neighbourhood. A bitch was given for her nursery an ex-stable thinly floored with straw. She at once proceeded to carry the straws one or two at a time to a corner of the room and after days of work completed a deep and strong-walled nest in one corner. The wall was so firmly compacted that subsequently the weight of the mother and her litter did not break it down.

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Vanished Mushrooms

A charming grass field in a Devon valley slopes down to a little beck. The grass in the field was becoming worse in amount and quality, so the Government's offer of help in restoring its quality was accepted, and a generous dressing with basic slag applied. The effect was admirable, especially in the encouragement of that precious plant, wild white clover. So far, so good ; but for many years the field has been famous for its crops of mushrooms. When these were sought nothing was found but one old and immense puffball, though the proper agarics were plentiful in other places. The owner of the field is inclined to believe—and the idea is held by others—that basic slag is inimical to the mushroom. It may well be true ; but the fact can scarcely be accepted without further evidence. Has any scientific body made enquiry ? Mushrooms of course are capricious things, appearing and disappearing for no osten- sible reason, like foxgloves and polecats and cross-bills.

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A Fearsome Insect A very queer incident was observed the other day at the edge of a Bedfordshire town. A large and fearsome insect was taken still living from the body of a dead starling and it was alleged that it had been previously seen to attack the bird. The murderer has been sent to me, coffined in a matchbox. The insect is known as sirex gigas and is frequently a cause of terror to beholders who take it for some sort of gigantic hornet. I remember one being brought to me by the leader of a troop of Boy Scouts who described it as a hornet. In that case the insect had emerged in quite unusual numbers from some pine logs collected for the camp fire. The long spear which is the chief cause of horror is a quite harmless weapon (except to trees) and is designed solely for the purpose, so far as I know, of boring holes in trees for the sake of laying eggs. It is an ovipositor, not a lance. That such an insect should attack any bird seems to me very improbable and that, if it attacked, its assault should be mortal seems yet more improbable.- It is of course just possible that the bird collapsed from fright or shock, if the insect struck it by accident in the eye. Birds die very easily from shock.

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In the Garden

Most gardeners—and many who are not gardeners—have been receiving catalogues from bulb growers. The majority come from Holland, some from Dutch growers with an address in this country, and a few from English growers and now, it is generally known, perhaps, though the fact is not very well advertised, that the bulb industry has been established and is growing steadily in Eastern England, not least at Spalding, Holbeach and Wisbech. Our growers have not attained the variety of the Dutch, but daffodils and tulips are grown at least as well in England as anywhere in the world, and indeed the comparative newness of the industry has lcd our growers to concentrate on the very best sorts. There is of course plenty of time left for deciding which sorts of bulb we mean to grow for next Christmas in the house or next spring in the garden, but it is as well to remember that no bulbs benefit more certainly from planting in August than many of the lilies, though they are not among the spring flowerers. Incidentally it is said that the crown imperial (which is a very early bloomer) is losing popularity. It would always be worth growing, if only for the fantastic speed of its growth in early spring.

W. BEACH Tnonms.