COUNTRY LIFE
Flourishing Craftsmen
A very good though highly epitomised display of British rural crafts is to be staged at the Paris exhibition. Real advances have been made of late in the organisation of the country craft in very many branches. For example, the Hereford County Council, which has set an example that other counties might imitate, has made a point of using local workmen to carry out their laudable determination to keep the old bridges and adapt them and rehabilitate them. A remarkable example of what a large sum of work a local reputation may bring comes from Nottingham where a smith has had orders up to nearly £600 in value for railings and gates and a wheelwright has secured orders for sixty carts within two years. A small but interesting example of the sort of minor service that local bodies can render comes from the same county where the education authority has had the wood-ash from a wheelwright's shop analysed, and secured for this waste product a ready market among gardeners. The greatest advance comes from the central salesmanship, and provision of expert tuition supplied from the Central Bureau of Rural Industries (6 Bayley Street, W.C. Both producers and purchasers should realise the practical value of its work.
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Daffodil Types A bowl of daffodils is before me. They consist of later sorts, though the very latest, worth untold sums per bulb, are not among them. Yet the bowl contains all the newer types, and the new lines of development are interesting. Three of these types are represented by Feu de joie, Primrose Phoenix and John Evelyn. Feu de joie is the oddest and by many people the most highly admired. It has a red orange centre very much crimped and crumpled. It has a double row of six white petals in each. These petals keep to themselves (as country people say), and are apt to be pointed and half folded, giving the suggestion almost of a cactus dahlia. Between them appear eccentrically short, orange, petal-like growths that should belong to the central tube. The quaint and salient flower is as fragrant almost as the jonquils (of which incidentally the newer sorts carry five or six flowers to the stalk).
* * * * A Double or Single
Primrose Phoenix is less odd but quite as far removed from the wide daffadowndilly with its yellow petals and "angels' trumpet" tube. It is more completely double than even the old-fashioned double of the butter and eggs of cottage gardens ; but its petals, which are of a dainty dark prinnose yellow, are so short and arranged so neatly that it resembles, not a dahlia but a carnation. A bowl full of it, or for that matter a bed, is a very lovely thing. Yet to most eyes the
• single flower is lovelier than the double ; and it arose first, is, so to say, more natural. The best flower in the bowl, to my eyes, is John Evelyn. There are many others like it for the type is popular. The broad white petals and the broad primrose tube darkening at the edge have a delicacy of tint and a balance of perfection that together are unrivalled in the class. These, of course, are personal preferences and newer, more costly bulbs have enhanced some of the qualities ; but the types are types that every gardener likes to possess.
* * * * A Thorny Problem There appeared in the garden the other day a number of very young hedgehogs, clad in spikes, as yet soft and lightly coloured. They are engaging atoms of life and look more like a real quadruped than their parents. Now in the sanie garden and very near to the same spot young hedgehogs appeared last November ; and various attempts were made to provide them with a snug home of warm leaves ; but they proved vagrom and disappeared. The question arises whether it is usual for hedgehogs to breed at such widely distant dates. It is a wonder that the animal is so conunon, since all keepers hate it, and no animal has a scent that appeals so strongly to dogs. Even a well-trained spaniel cannot resist it. Informa- tion is desired on the size and frequency of the family. Willow Tits Most of us in these days- bang up coconuts or fat for the tits, and the ready food and often the ready nesting-box have certainly increased the various species. Even the number of sorts increases. Two birds, for example, came this week to the edge of a little birdbath in front of the window. . They resembled the marsh tit, but did not look identical with it. Were they willow tits ? I am told that this species is an the increase, especially on the borders of Kent and Sussex, and in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells. All the other tits are easily enough distinguished ; but for years no distinction was drawn between the marsh and the willow tit. Both have a darker and less salient hue than other tits ; and the differences between them by no means leap to the eye. The more rounded tail of the willow tit is, I am told, the easiest point to distinguish. But birds are evasive beings and very difficult to mark in silhouette.
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London Ringdoyes An additional influx of birds into St. James's Park is, I think, regrettable. The true wild wood pigeons or ring- doves have bred and flourished there for a century. Their comfortable coo and bright plumage have been a real addition to the Park. They are now mixed up with a horde of mongrel pigeons of a tame type which are not nearly so pleasing or so interesting. Are they natural immigrants from the Trafalgar Square colony or has their number in the Park been officially fostered ? In any case it would be well if the wild types were less freely diluted. The lake-side and lake make, in their way, a delightful aviary ; and have proved more than once an attraction to really wild birds on their migration routes. Even the furtive corn-crake has dropped there for a night's rest. The most populous wild bird, the blackheaded gull, has developed his spring plumage (which is a brown not a black head) and for the most part gone. They are said to fly direct from London to their favourite breeding grounds in Norfolk and Lincolnshire. They mass there in astonishing numbers and show no particular desire to be near the sea, though the Eastern breeding marshes and Broads are much less far from the sea than some of those in the West. It is curious, but both in West and East their favourite breeding pitch is a watershed. This alleged sea-bird enjoys fres'a water.
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A Nightingale Year It is, I should say, a good nightingale year. The pairs round about Hertfordshire commons are very numerous ; and we may hope that the bird continues its recent extension of range into the west. The list of published records Of its appearance was worth analysing. It completely held up the old standard view that the nightingale, being a bad flier, is afraid of a wide crossing, and for the most part comes to Eng- land by the Calais-Dover route or thereabouts. It was heard, so far as I can discover, in Kent, Sussex and Surrey before there was any record farther north or west. This is the more remarkable as many migrants prefer a more westerly route. Wheatears are often seen first in Hampshire or Dorset, and swallows along the western seaboard. My nearest nightin- gale, so to say, sings vociferously at s i ann., but adjourns to
• a remoter clump of bushes for his night song.
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Garden Oxlips It has been lamented that the oxlip continues to vanish. It was common in my early remembrance on the heavy soils of Huntingdon and Essex, but is now certainly rarer. Happily it is specially cultivated by some few gardeners ; and it flourishes marvelously under garden conditions. One of these persevering gardeners sent me plants of all the sorts of oxlip ; and all are flowering in rare profusion. There are the true oxlip, the polyanthus primroses, and the hybrids, and all seem to share in this gift far flowering in mass. It is, of course, a marvellous year for the primrose and the polyanthus tribe. They love wet for the most part and are not fond of sun out of season, that is, in the autumn and winter. Such free and full flowering over a long period of individual flowers has rarely so delighted
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