COUNTRY LIFE
Spring Promise Spring has come on steadily and normally, with none of those sudden leaps which always give the country-mind cause for such gloomy pleasure. " Ah, we shall suffer for this. You mark my words, we shall suffer." Crops on the whole look well, except that there is again some patchiness among cereals on new-ploughed land. I have seen first-class fields of winter-beans full of promise ; winter oats and wheat that are a delight to the eye. It is perhaps a fraction early to compare this year's fruit-blossom with that of 1940, but the promise seems slightly lighter. The cherry-orchards are just breaking white, and in a week or so will be the most glorious sight on the landscape. Heavy blossom is of course no proof of a heavy crop. A dry, calm, warm May is essential for cherries ; bitter winds and frost will do great damage ; heavy rain will cause the blossom to ball mouldily and not set. Against what seems to be a fairly high average promise for crops, however, must be set a rather high high percentage of losses among spring lambs. One report speaks of a seventy-five per cent. loss on one day's lambs ; another farmer tells me his average loss has been thirty per cent. He attributes the cause to worm in the sheep, due apparently to over-stocking.
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