COUNTRY LIFE
AN old agricultural labourer, who developed a talent for carpentry, is now chief repairer of all implements on the farm. -Last week a land girl took him an almost moribund broom to have the head screwed on. At the first effort the screw was not quite flush, and the old man would not let the broom go till this flaw was rectified. " Why not let it go, as it is? " said the girl. " It wouldn't be a job," said the old man, adding, "like the man with the post." Pressed farther for an explanation, he told a traditional fable. The men were putting in a new post. " Is it straight? " asked the foreman. "Near enough," replied the man. "Near enough is not .good enough," said the foreman ; and the post was reset. Again the foreman asked: " Is it straight? " and the man, taking his time, answered, "Upright," and the foreman said, " Upright's good enough." There you have in epitome the reason why the English agricultural labourer, old school, is the most moral man in the world.
A Precocious Season
Three young robins, with spotted breasts and rather tremulous legs, appeared last week by the kitchen door of a small house in Hertfordshire. This is the most remarkable evidence that has come my way out of a quantity illustrating the absurd earliness of this strange season. I once found a robin's nest with one egg during the first week of January—oddly enough within a few hundred yards of the place where these young robins were seen. The robin is, I think, the earliest nester of all our birds, on rare occasions but by no means on the average. Stranger in its way, for it belies a standard theory, an Admiral butterfly emerged in Devon at a rather earlier date. A certain number of martins or swallows were seen in various parts both at the end of last year and the beginning of this—a strange delay, such as suggested even to Gilbert White that there was truth in the unproved theory that these birds hibernated on occasion. One of those who keep records from year to year (for pheno- logical reasons) reports that the chaffinch began singing exactly a month earlier this year than last ; and indeed the volume of song has been the mark of this February. Among other singers lark and accentor were both in very merry voice on St. Valentine's Day.
More Cottages Some warm discussions have arisen round Mr. Hudson's promise of 3,000 new labourers' cottages. It may be that this is an inadequate dole ; but I have a conviction that the cottages will be of an admirable type. The .present Minister of Agriculture was studying the structure of the ideal cottage at the ideal price ten years ago in his own constituency, where holdings as small as two or three acres were multiplying, and by cultivation under glass giving a surprisingly high return. The old ideal (fostered fruitfully by Mr. St. Loe Strachey in The Spectator) of a hundred-pound cottage is, of course, no longer attainable ; but the art of building cheaply has been greatly advanced of late, notably by Mr. Hudson himself and by one charitable society associated with the name of Sutton. Most County Council cottages have been unnecessarily dear. Doubtless many thousands of cottages are needed ;, but one reason for this present inadequacy is that they are rented or bought by people who never did a stroke of agricultural work in their days. Some of them are now inhabited by people of considerable wealth, and a very large number are let at an extravagant price and in a mouldered state by owners who have to live on the proceeds. Thousands have been officially condemned ; but left as they were on every sort of plea. One of the snuggest cottages I know, with quite the best garden, is a very cheap but very warm wooden bungalow built by a railway man, partly with his own hands. I cannot say with Thoreau: " Never met I a man engaged in the so simple operation of building his own house"; but the spectacle is rare.
In the Garden Several papers, including The Times, have just reported the discovery, or rather invention, of a new vegetable in Bermuda, called celtuce. I grew the new vegetable successfully, as did others, last year, and wrote something about it in this place a year ago. Celtuce was hybridised by Burpee in the United States two or three years ago. Some wrong impres- sions of its value seem to be abroad. It is essentially a large, high and very hardy lettuce, used as other lettuces are used ; but it has one peculiar virtue. The flouter stalk grows stout and tall, and has a subtle flavour suggestive of celery. In other vegetables the untimely promotion of growth, known as bolting, is a vice. In celtuce it is a virtue. We should all be now sowing some sort of lettuce in frames or under cloches, and broad beans and a few early peas in the open. Those who want the room which their parsnips or leeks still occupy may dig them up and cover the dug roots with earth ; and they will still last a long time without Postage on this issue : Inland and Overseas, id.
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