COUNTRY LIFE
LOCAL diaries are always interesting. The following comes (incidentally and in effect in a letter on other subjects) from the Hampshire-Dorset boundary. " How wonderfully early this year is! On Badbury Rings I found a cowslip fully out in March. There are sturdy foxcubs in the woods, whereabouts the vixen has been busier than the farmers like. Rabbits nearly two months old were supporting themselves in the hedgerows early in February. On February 17th I saw a brimstone butterfly, heard a lark in full song and saw the kingfishers. What a wonderful morning! " I doubt whether, on the whole, the season is or has been exceptionally early. Plum-blossom and migrants have been pat to a standard date, but to this " normalcy (as an American Presi- dent said) there have been some exceptions which are extremely difficult to explain.. Several observers, for example, saw ,humming-bird hawk- moths in March ; and it is so hard to believe that this immigrant flew the sea so early in the year that the possibility of its hibernation has been queried. I once saw a group of them land in Devon, and that was in mid-May.
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