6 OCTOBER 1939, Page 16

Allowable . Booty What may be done and what not in

these strange country places is utterly unknown. Into a little rough field of mine running along an almost unfenced lane I saw, on an earlier occasion, a tiny tot of a girl enter and begin to pick a dandelion. Her elder sister rushed after her, pulled her violently away, and said, in obvious fear, " They'll be after you if you do that." It is in the eyes of such visitors to this extraordinary place, the country village, quite as wicked to go picking blackberries or mushrooms as to rob an orchard of its plums or apples. They will doubtless learn one sort of difference between wild and cultivated fruit when they dis- cover the crabs and sloes of the hedge-row.