COUNTRY LIFE - FROM a May-time walk in Wytham Woods,
by Oxford, in the days before they came into Mr. ffennels's ownership, survives one very vivid memory, It is not of the fine trees, not of the vista where you first see the noble bend of the Thames below and around, nor of the fine Manor House. It is of an open space of wood well dotted with newly planted trees and low bushes. These apparently had provided one species of bird with its optimum of building conditions. The perfect site had been found by a large number of pairs of blackcaps. Their liquid, bubbling songs—half- way between blackbird and nightingale—were heard on all sides, and we found nest after nest, as if the birds were gregarious by nature, as they certainly are not. The best of modem bird books have emphasised with much detail the territorial exclusiveness of nesting pairs, from the twenty-yard range of the buntings to the two-mile range of the peregrine falcon. This insistence on a separate territory is general, except for the birds classed as gregarious, such as rooks or terns ; but now and again it happens that a patch of ground is so closely dotted with congenial sites as to be irresistible, and the prejudice against close neighbours is allowed to lapse. So it was that summer at Wytham.
Oxford Bastions The beneficent gift of this wooded hill to Oxford University is but one example of Mr. ffennels's wide zeal for the ideals of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, at whose informal discussions he was often a most welcome consultant. Oxford now is most strategically defended from the Philistines by three invincible hills, by Shotover, when the Oxford Preservation Trust hare a wide reserve of field, common and spinney (not, I hope, any longer too offensively fenced), and by Boan Hill (that "nest of singing birds " of another than the Wytham species, towards the crown of which stands the eccentric mound or Observation Post, erected by Mr. Arthur Evans, and the ingenious English garden about it. It is true that Oxford is like Stratford-on-Avon in one unhappy aspect: only a single entrance road, that by Heddington, has been allowed to retain its charm ; but at least you can look down at Oxford spires from now invulnerable " gazebos," as that facetious word would once have been used. Wytham may be compared in certain aspects with the Quarry at Shrewsbury and the famous view from Richmond Hill.
Fertile Marshes The work of recovery of waste places to cultivation has revealed several forgotten aspects of local history. One of the most interesting has been unearthed during the draining by a local council of the Pembrokeshire marsh of Castle-Martin Corse. The at first doubtful operation had scarcely started when the discovery was made of a number of old ditches. They had been dug and in some lines planted with willows some century and a half ago. How often do marshes make good corn-land! The best new farms I saw in Australia were on the Peel marshes near Perth, where that wise Premier, Sir James Mitchell, was planting his so-called " Jimmiegrants " and continuing his draining schemes at the- date of my visit. Later I was present at discussions of the best way of increasing the crop area in eastern Newfoundland, and a little and successful eperiment was started in. draining bogs. which was held to be a cheaper operation than grubbing trees and more likely to yield good soil. A good deal of marshland can be enriched (as in the process of " warping " in the English Fens) by no more difficult operation than spreading some of the sub-sail on the surface, thus adding the desired minerals to the abundance of humus. Would it, I wonder, be possible to drain at least the fringe of that large and wonderful marsh known as the Dowrog on the outskirts of St. Davids?
In the Garden In digging a patch of the kitchen garden for March sowing I came upon quite a sprinkling of onions, thought too small and undeveloped for gathering. They certainly would not have kept. As it was, they proved excellent cooked like Leeks with a good part of the stalk, and this is always worth doing with the nishpins (if one may compare onions with pigs), both of undeveloped onions and leeks. In general, rotation is as important in the garden as on the farm ; but onions are one of the few vegetables which, may do quite as well on the old ground. The crop that above others exhausts the ground is spinach, and extra care should be taken to refertilise the site of it. Less need be grown by those who are wise enough to use its wild alternative—the stinging nettle— which is a rich plant, whether used as food or manure.
W. BEACH THostAs.
Postage on this issue : Inland and Overseas, id.
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