Country Life
A GARDEN OF EDEN.
Many of us have visited that curious piece of ground at Rothamsted which has been allowed to relapse to its native state, and in its eighty or so years of freedom has become forest, an atom of primeval England. I visited last week a less informal experiment on a larger scale, and, as it seemed to me, of more economic interest. Its scene is a Midland estate of which I used to know every acre intimately, its soil, its subsoil, its hedges, trees, depressions, and its cultural history. The place has slowly degenerated for a good many years, especially in capital value ; but I had not realized till this September how the decay of farming had affected the wild life and, in some measure, the botany. Animals once kept under by stern decree have multiplied, and in their turn destroyed other animals. It is a question whether the change in that regard is to the good.
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