26 FEBRUARY 1916, Page 14

ESSEX WAYS.

[To TER EDITOR Or THE " SPEC/ITOR:]

Sra,—I see that a tribunal in a market town in Essex has decided that a grower of peaches need not send his two assistants (young men and unmarried) to fight for their country. Both the tribunal and the grower of poaches must be aware that there are plenty of women and old men who can prune peach-trees. Apparently the inhabitants of Laputa, in Gulliver's Travels, have descendants, who require the " services of an officer called a flapper, to flap them on the eyes with his bladder, and prevent them walking down precipices and bouncing their heads against