COUNTRY LIFE
THE value of the wood that lies rotting in woods and fields has at last been realised by authority. Its virtue has perhaps been even exaggerated. Small groups of soldiers, many of them women, bivouacked about the country in huts and tents, are definitely instructed to make up fuel deficiencies by the use of any wood that they can glean. Some of them are given insufficient coke or coal to keep them,warm or to cook their food or heat their water for more than three days of the week. The instruction to use local wood is a good one in itself, but it must be recorded that some owners of woods and spinneys and some farmers will not allow the wood to be taken. Land recently bought for "develop- ment "—unhappy word—is the most jealously guarded. The result is that some of the units of soldiers, though much of their work is at night, get much less fuel than the poorest cottager. Such examples of fuel economy are hardly to be welcomed, even by the fuel controller.
Common Goats
The utter neglect of our commons by the local dwellers is a general experience. What rights the commoners have of running animals there, whether geese or donkeys, are wholly neglected ; and as for half-year or Lammas land the public's privilege has been so completely disregarded that its existence is forgotten and the right apparently lost. On commons the absence of animals has allowed so much brushwood, such as scrub oak, layered elm, sown thorn and holly, that the character of the common has been much changed, and for the worse. For the moment the war is helping to restore the old state. Goats have appeared in such numbers as to suggest the eastern part of Spain ; and since the goat is omnivorous the scrub is being eaten back again as in the old days, and the grass returns. On such foods many goats give five or six pints of milk a day.
Lords of the Manor
A good many commons have been lately sold, as to the Lordship of the Manor, by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to golf clubs, which of course take good care that the grass flourishes ; but even on commons that are golf courses the land just off the course is apt to relapse to scrub ; and the golf clubs would better fulfil their duties as Lords of the Manor if they looked after the parts of the common not directly within their sphere of interest. They are apt to allow bits of the common to become dumps both for sewage and rubbish, to the great loss of amenity. Very unlovely wastes of nettles succeed the sewage and groves of elm and briar "half conceal and half reveal" the scraps of metal and glass and what not. Nor is anything done to discourage litter.
An Irked Gull In one of the very worst lines of poetry, so called, Robert Browning asks the rhetorical question: "Irks care the cropful bird ? " A little particular incident would suggest that sometimes it does. The story was told to me as comment on a suggestion that a pheasant with a score or so of acorns in its crop flies perceptibly slower. Fishing boats coming in with a large catch of herring were almost mobbed by gulls, and at the same time a number of onlookers came to see the boats land. They watched one gull seize and swallow a large fish ; and while so engaged it was more or less surrounded by the crowd. Discovering this in some alarm, it made several attempts to fly out of the circle, but could not raise itself high enough ; and was finally compelled to disgorge the herring (later broken up by other gulls), and thus lightened, flew away with ease. It is not uncommon for hawks so to gorge themselves that they scarcely attempt to fly. away ; and finches will actually kill themselves.
In the Garden It is a great year for berries ; and even in war-time we are perhaps permitted to welcome them for their purely aesthetic value. Among the most beautiful and salient at the moment are the sprays of berberis Wilsonae. The wild barberry, grown comparatively rare since the Ministry of Agriculture condemned it as the host of rust in wheat, has a berry of very piquant flavour, at one time much appreciated domestically. It would be interesting to know whether our war-time cooks have experimented with other varieties. Few of the more popular sorts have the shape or indeed the tint of the wild berry. It is pointed out in an admirable leaflet produced by the R.S.P.C.A. on Weed Seeds for Poultry that the berries of berberis, ivy, mistletoe, dogwood and yevt should not be fed to poultry because the seeds are poisonous, though the pulp is edible. All these are eaten by wild birds. We certainly ought to collect more seeds and berries for mixing with poultry food W. BEACH THOMAS.
Postage on this issue : Inland and Overseas, Iti.
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