COUNTRY LIFE
July Crops
The English climate—when it is good, it is very very good— has compensations even at its worst. July has been frankly abominable, and may involve very heavy losses. Much of the hay—a more valuable crop than is generally understood— was reduced to soggy cellulose. A good deal was burnt, at any rate in the West of England, and an ounce or two of value extracted from its ashes. Wind and rain together have laid— the participle is a technical term—a good deal of wheat and oats. Much soft fruit, though its season has been prolonged, has become rotten before it is half ripe, like Shakespeare's medlar. You pluck a mushroom, not a strawberry, and an attempt to pick raspberries involves a shower bath. To continue the list of meteorological abominations, the rains have caused the death of many thousands of partridges and some pheasants. The tale sounds gloomy enough ; but the impressions of the depression are severer than facts and figures warrant. Many of the farmer's crops—oats, barley, roots, beet, field-peas and beans, and hops—look well enough. The crops of early potatoes have proved exceptional. Many market gardens seldom looked better. Even in the haysel the new driers (of which several types were in use) have saved a good deal of hay, of a feeding value perhaps twice as high as the old bleached product. The wells and springs, vanished or dangerously attenuated in three dry years, bubble with fatness. Much more rain will doubtless prove disastrous to most field-crops ; but a return to sunshine would give a normal year, even in cereal farming.
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Parental Partridges The partridges need an investigation to themselves. In sonic parts of Norfolk (which vies with Hampshire as the supreme county for the bird) the pairs brought forth success- fully enormous families. They have wasted away. The fittest only have survived ; but from my own observation—and infor- mation—I am convinced that the parents (who are supreme in the art of parenthood) have saved many more than is generally estimated ; at any rate in Eastern and Southern England. A covey of eight perambulates my garden paths ; and they may perhaps be taken as an average. Pig-farmers rejoice if their sows maintain an average litter of eight. Game pre- servers may feel equally satisfied, though they like to see coveys of fifteen or so. Those who are keeping partridge farms for the scientific study of the bird are persuaded that the secret of maintaining a strong stock is to keep coveys down to a reasonable size. In districts where both the French and the English birds are found it is a common experience, supported by some evidence this year, that the French species is the better resister of rain. They are better on their legs in youth, though worse on the wing in later months.
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Far-Flung Protection The cult of birds and their preserimtion has spread from England to almost all parts of the world, as we all know ; and it would be well if the knowledge acquired in different parts were pooled. The quarterly journal, Bird Notes and. N'ws, of the R.S.P.B. is a modest pool of the right sort, though perhaps it sacrifices home news to a wider ideal. The summer number is an exceptional example. It opens with an account of the National Park of Patagonia, goes on to two articles on South Africa, one about its kingfishers, one about birds on the Sumach, then devotes its first notes to Cunninghame Graham in the Argentine and passes on to bird protection in New South Wales. That is not the end. The longest article in the brief journal concerns the birds on Lord Howe Island, a dot on the other side of Australia. The few inhabitants deserve the world-wide praise bestowed on Dr. Axel Munthe for his creation of the best Italian sanctuary ; and they have marvellously simplified the rules and regulations for preservation. The visitor on landing sees one conspicuous notice, as short and comprehensive as a law can be : " All bird life is absolutely protected."
Australian Preservers
Australia, and especially New South Wales, under whose care the island shelters are, has numbers of enthusiastic
observers. One of my pleasantest recollections is a greeting from a group of ornithologists soon after landing at Sydney. I never saw - nearly so many sorts of birds within small compass as near a lagoon outside Rockhampton, whither I was conducted by an expert and ardent observer. He made a list of rather fewer than fifty species that passed before us within a quarter of an hour as we sat near the side of the lake. I journeyed from there (by a train sometimes called the Turkey Express) to a station some sixty miles or so from the railway. We spent a good part of my time there in looking at birds and their nests. In that lightly populated district the Bower Bird, whose nest and tunnel are found, could find little material for exercising its faculty for decoration beyond the blanched bony processes of sheep and bits of tobacco-containers. When I saw there for the
first time the great heaps of leaves in which and by which the Brush Turkey hatches its eggs, I little imagined that a
bird of the species would ever achieve the feat in. England ;
but the miracle has been wrought in consecutive years at Whipsnade ; and the birds flourish there in its lovely little sanctuary. The New South Wales authorities, backed by strong public opinion, are pursuing egg collectors persistently. They have recently confiscated (and given to museums) as many as ten thousand eggs illegally collected. They do not share the view lately preached by Mr. Edgar Chance that the taking of clutches does not diminish the species.
* * * *• Forest Holdings
The coming autumn will see a considerable extension of that very interesting and economic form of smallholding originally designed by the Forestry Commissioners. The Commission is not everywhere popular. It has begun to afforest a certain amount of fine agricultural land—an act detested by the agricultural labourer. It condemns black ground, as more detestable to game-preservers. Its actions incidentally flood neighbouring estates with exiled stoats and vermin. It may endanger characteristic country, such as Brechland ; and the excess of conifer, to the exclusion of hard woods and native trees, may ruin the scenery. as in parts of the New Forest. Nevertheless the Commission is doing good national work and it promises to give valuable help in some of the depressed areas, which happen to be particularly well-fitted for the planting. One great advan- tage of the forestry smallholding is that the busiest time on the nurseries begins in November, and on the whole the slackest time is the spring when work on a holding is most necessary. The working afforester has therefore an admirable opportunity of being productively busy all the year round. These little homesteads at the edge of the afforested areas are as pleasing in fact as in appearance and are to be very considerably increased this autumn.
An Autumnal Shrub Late flowering shrubs are a delight in every garden. No one can do without the Buddleia Veitchiana Variabilis or its type ; a garden is scarcely complete without the bush Hypericum ; and the first has the added advantage of being the best of all lures for the more gorgeous autumn butterflies. These shrubs are lovely : some are just queer, but not less attractive for this quality. Some specialist has been recommending the rarely mentioned dipplopappas. It is a shrub I have grown for a long time and have extracted• many pleasures from it. The latest critic puts its maximum height at four feet. It is doubtless of a dwarfish habit in most places ; but there was a specimen in one of the Welsh agricultural stations which resembled a tree. It was certainly some twelve feet in height. It has a likeness to the Buddleia that its appearance does not suggest. The flowers of both smell of neat honey. The dipplopappas is the less pleasant, to some noses unpleasant, for it emphasises the sharp bitter tang in honey ; and it attracts flies. but not butterflies. It has many virtues ; is full of colour all the year, flowers in the more barren season, has a close bushy habit and is easily multiplied. The silver dipplopappas, which is more straggly and less attractive than the gold, seeds itself freely and appears in the most unlikely places. W. BEACH TnomAs.
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