COUNTRY LIFE

Subsistence Production.. .

It happens not seldom that the best way of progress is a return to the elemental ; and the best present example of the truth is the endeavour to cure the worst evils of the industrial revolution by the principle of subsistence produc- tion. Two experiments of which something was said a year ago are both progressing extremely well, one in South Wales and one in Lancashire ; they seem to me to demand national attention. The South Wales scheme (of which I know more) goes ahead splendidly ; and you may see there (as elsewhere in the North-West) the steady increase of glass farming. Last year an extra farm was acquired in the Pontypool 'neighbourhood ; and soon after its purchase a group of the unemployed set to work to build glass houses. A crop was reaped- even last year. This year 5,000 plants have been raised from seed and it is expected that before the end of the season the crop of tomatoes alone will reach the .weight of 10,000 lbs. Consider what this means. First, employment—pleasant and useful employment for un- employed men. Second, good food for poor families. Third, an addition to the nation's productivity. Close by a farm is being planted with 'fruit,- both big and Small, soft and hard. The scheme includes every department of farming besides certain crafts such as tailoring and carpentry, a bakery, a canteen and much besides.' It has stirred interest abroad and pilgrims have come from many EUropean countries. I do not quite know what is Meant by raising the standard Of living, but in these pioneer valleys the standard of victuals has risen and therefore the standard of health : more than this is the raising of the standard of happiness.

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More Collective Farms

I-must believe that the principle may be very widely extended, may be, indeed, extended to every district where unemployment is rife, certainly, for example, to Jarrow which is half encircled by suitable land. Someone—I think Sir Daniel. Hall--once -pointed out that the population and the acreage of the country are virtually identical in numbers : One. acre: to one person ; since an acre can feed a large family (or even two or three if glass is supplied), no one should ever go -short of good fresh food. There is available- land almost everywhere where people may supply themselves with native food. These subsistence 'production schemes in Monmouth and Lancashire are on a well-organised co-operative basis : all the workers obtain food at cost price, independently of the particular, jobs they work at. The food is, in ersence, bought by work. In other places the individual garden or the allotment may be the better way ; what is important is that land should be made available for the workless. The Friends, not unhelped by Government and other agencies; have established a proved and excellent method for supplying seeds, tools, manures and advice. If the workless themselves (whose worst affliction is progressive lethargy of spirit) would foster the ambition to grow their own food, half the misfortune would be cured. The record of the Welsh and Wigan -experiments is in print and may be- had from Head- quarters, Plaw. Hatch, Bodenham Road, Hereford. It is called, " An Order of Friends."

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A Popular Bishop

It often comes about that one variety of flower suddenly attains a quite general circulation. It becomes the fashion ; but, unlike most other fashions, it is generally induced by some real quality in the plant. The most popular flower of the moment, if my. experience in many parts of England is any test, is the dahlia known as the Bishop of Landaff. Personally, I do not care for -dahlias. in general. Some of them, as i a friend wrote after visiting a show, are "positively alarming" --so big are they and heavy and brilliant. Now the Bishop is as bright as a flame, but it is not alarming, and its combined' beauties are convincing. The dark purplish foliage, topped by the scarlet flowers, are a triumph of combination. Those who do not like show dahlias, of the type of the enormous Egyptian sun god, like the simple bedding dahlias ; and the Bishop of Landaff keeps some of the grace of the shnpIe and does not swell to the alarming. proportions or ponderosity of the many-petalled sorts. It well deserves the extent of its circulation. " You cannot go wrong with him," as an enthusi- astic grower said. It may be put into the category of best sellers, following the career of the blue meconopsis or the primula Florinde from Tibet or the Golden Gleam nasturtium or the orange Iceland poppy or the Poulsen polyanthus roses.

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Steel Manure

We have been vouchsafed from time to time, in silly seasons and out of them, a correspondence on the subject of shaving blades and their use after rejection. I came last week upon a suggestion that was altogether new to me. In the garden where I walked grew a number of hydrangeas, which, as we all know, carry heads of flowers, sometimes of blue, sometimes of a pink shade. Now one of the plants was very much bluer than the others and I thought that perhaps this was due to its more shady situation. Not a bit of it. The blueness was due to razor blades. It seems to be a prevalent belief in the neighbourhood, where cottage gardens are very fine, that if superfluous blades are buried above the roots of a hydrangea they induce a blue tint in the petals. I publish the report, as they say in the newspaper4 with due reserve !

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A Swinging Table

Those who feed birds and are a little saddened by the excess of starlings, which wolf the food like any harpy, may find it worth while to try a simple device which has quite repelled the starlings from some gardens. They do not like a swinging table. If you hang up a board from the four corners not a starling will venture on it even if it is covered with the lumps of fat that he especially prefers. In one garden where nearly all other birds were driven from the tables by starlings, unsuspected neighbours have come to the swinging table, including nuthatches—a rather shy species—and marsh tits. Nuthatches must be much com4 mover than most people think. I know two gardens—one in Sussex, one in Huntingdonshire—where they come regu- larly and in numbers to the food tray set in each case on the sill of a bedroom window. They are common in Oxford gardens well in the midst of the city. They are among the commoner birds of Hertfordshire and build there in garden nesting-boxes. A particularly attractive lure is the peanut sliced or ground. It pleases many tirds, not least (in one garden) the greenfinch.

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Musical Gnats

The quaint idea that gnats or mosquitoes are musical has occurred to an organiser of open-air concerts. On one hillside gnats flew overhead in very visible groups. They flew slowly if the music was soft or low and rapidly accelerated their pace as the sounds rose or quickened. The observer was quite sure of his facts. After all there is nothing at all unlikely in the idea that any insect might be sensitive to musical vibration. Indeed, creatures possessed of a number of 'ganglionic centres or nerve nuclei, scattered here and there about the body, would be rather more likely than a creature with a mere brain to be swayed by such vibrations. Perhaps some musical scientist will try to make earwigs or wood-lice dance to the tune of his fiddle, as responsive

nightingales will sing !

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English Ignorance

The experience of a country and suburban walk suggests this year that the English people are forgetting their Saxon. The first man I asked a question of said : " No, there was no pasSage across the railway : the road was a cul-de-sac." The second man cheered us up, for he explained that the road came to a dead end—an admirably English phrase not heard so often as of old. Whether the first man would have understood if we had asked whether the road was a blind alley, I am not sure, for:it appears that there is a general ignorance of the proper meaning of thoroughfare. Road authorities now are forced, or so they think, to substitute " NO through road." This ignorance is so grimly confessed in one place that the authorities themselves are under suspicion Of ignorance of Saxon. Their tautological notice says : " No