COUNTY DEFENCE. . - • - It is no wonder
that the counties are beginning to organize systems of self-defence. Hertfordshire . and • Leicestershire have passed a stringent law utterly forbidding the uprooting of wild flowers ; and this regulation is indication of a well thought out scheme of general self-protection and develop- ment. Rural planning has become an immediate and vital necessity. Among other details, very precise and strict regulations are to be enforced in the coming year in regard to some of the commons. Now a county common has very little in common with an urban common, a fact that most townsmen honestly ignore. In any urban area the general public—like Sam Weller's donkey—has a definite right of " air and exercise." Contrariwise, the public as such has no rights on a rural common. It is called common because certain local commoners have rights there ; and powers of a much more drastic and exclusive sort than anyone has yet attempted are already being put into action. It is no wonder. On one common a motor-drawn picnic party lit the gorse along with an adjacent hedgerow and watched it burn with Nero-like glee while one of the party took out his camera to record the delightful crime. This and other incidents like it have stirred the commissioners to look into their powers and to exercise them. They recognize that the legal aspect is difficult. The golfer; cricketer, gipsy, and picnicker all stir polemical problems ; and each common is different from any other. But a change of policy has been set in motion by rural defenders.
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