COUNTRY LIFE
NOT all the modern ease of communication has yet succeeded in robbing the English counties of their individuality. Wiltshire, for example. has no very distinctive boundaries and shares the principal features, such as the Downs, with its neighbours. Yet Wiltshire keeps its claim to be a pioneer in husbandry. Some years ago, Mr. Hosier, that inventor of genius, discovered new ways of treating poultry, to the great good of the Down soil, and managing milch cows and using old motor-cars on the farm. Today Mr. Friend Sykes attracts agricultural pilgrims from a wide circle. He gave up good land in the Thames valley to buy a downland farm valued at a purchase price of £4 an acre and has made the desert blossom as the rose, and has much more than fulfilled the Swift ideal of making two blades of grass grow where one grew before: well-tillered wheat succeeds sparse herbage. He is to lecture, I rejoice to read (at 57 Dean Street on October 29th), on behalf of the Rural. Reconstruction Association which, with too little general support, has been a pioneer in agricultural good sense for a great many years.
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