Autolycus at Large
Depredations from gardens, generally regarded as sacrosanct, have become sadly common of late. Who the thieves are—soldiers, civi- lians and what sort of civilian—is a question much discussed. It was solved the other day in one village by the discovery of several urban children in the act. In the early days of the exodus some young guests came to their cottage hosts laden with cabbages which they had found growing wild in a field, as they said, and believed. They were entirely crestfallen when the enormity of the offence was pointed out. It is, I think, quite difficult for them to understand that stuff lying about unguarded in the open is private property in the ordinary sense. Fruit and plants are looked upon, so to say, as ferae naturae. Some few, on the contrary, go to the other extreme. I heard one small girl scolding a yet smaller girl for picking a dandelion. " They'll be after you," she said, " if you pick their flowers." The gull between the attitude and knowledge of town and country children is enormous —in moral concerns as well as in natural history; but it is not always just to suppdse that the urban product is the worse. A new environ- ment is very upsetting.
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