COUNTRY LIFE Official Spring
Spring (official) opened last week " with even more than its usual severity " ; but almost with its usual, and yet always new, pleasantness. The phenologists with their curious science have laid it down that the best time to sow barley is when the blackthorn opens its flowers. The coincidence will occur this spring, and we may hope that it is omen of a bountiful harvest. Is spring late or early? The question is not so easy to answer as you may think even for the engrooved diarist and complete countryman. Most critics will say that this spring is late ; but the birds, the so-called summer visitors, are not late. Two members of my household and one neigh- bour are quite sure that they heard an unmistakable cuckoo in the second week of March. May we credit the evidence? It is still, I think, denied that the presence of a March cuckoo has ever been proved. I am told that both the wheat- ear and the chiff-chaff were early. The general truth is doubtless that in exposed sites spring is very late indeed. In one orchard, well tee'd up and quite unprotected, the apple buds are still scarcely more perceptible than in winter, and the daffodils grown in the grass are still in tight bud, while those in a sheltered bed are already past their best. The continuous aliquid amari of the northerly winds has been dis- regarded only in the hollows and snug retreats ; and even there the snow has whitened the ground for an appreciable period. Even the South of France has not been exempt.
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