COUN I RY LIFE
A NEW and "blessed word," dedication, is coming into vogue. For some years altruistic land-owners have been dedicating their property to the nation. They can now dedicate their spinneys to a com- mission, and if the little wood is felled they may be qualified for a generous subsidy of £7 los. an acre for replanting. Now England has no big woods or forests, in the sense of large woods; but the whole country is lined and dotted with belts and small woods and groves and spinneys. That fox's favourite course, well-known to the hunting annalist, from Little Gidding Gorse to Hamerton Grove, to Salome Wood, to Buckworth Woed, lie good example of such a string of tree-bearing acres in a rather bald shire. To the amaze- ment, even of the elect, such little groups with scattered trees have supplied us with some 90 per cent. of the timber we have needed in war-time. It would be a melancholy thought that these woods (where the anemones opened on the first day of spring) should be- come mere nurseries of timber, planted in drilled battalions, but dedication may be indeed a blessed word if the £7 los. is spent on hard woods and deciduous trees, not on conifers, under whose shade "no birds sing" and no flowers grow. On this subject some land- owners of my acquaintance have refused previous subsidies because of the Government's ingenious parsimony of charging income-tax on their own subsidy, thus halving its apparent value. Is this £7 los. to be so treated?
Egypt's Spring Here is a spring picture sent from the famous oasis of FayeYtuti by the Egyptian border in the last weeks of February. The country is described* as singularly lovely, with big trees, but botany is not the young officer's first love. "The birds were even better than I expected. Within a few miles of the hotel I saw 72 different sorts (and wrote a list of them in the Visitors' Book)." . . . . From the edge of the lake he saw hurfdreds of different waders, even !tare ones, including Temmink's Stint and the dusky redshank. One side of the lake was black with duck, mostly tufted and 'Shoveler, and coots. Many sorts of wagtail, including the blue-headed, black, headed and Egyptian. England at the present date was suggested by a host of chiffchaff "singing in every bush," but it was pure Egypt when a flock of twenty Little Green Bee-eaters perched on a telegraph wire, from which they pounced on bees and " banter them on the wire." How many young Englishmen have been helped by birds to forget all about the war! In a small way I felt this myself during the last war (especially in the spring of 1916), and saw in France a great deal of two birds which have just been reported in England, the Little Bittern, whose nest I found in the marshes of St. Omer, and the Golden Oriole.
New Crime
A new crime by the grey squirrel has been watched' with a rather angry interest in a neighbouring garden. The one squirrel that frequents the lawn and trees near the house has taken to eating the crocuses. He chooses only the yellow sorts and consumes the flowers. One has heard of squirrels digging up bulbs (which are attacked also by mice), but flower-consumption adds yet a new charge. Is any creature quite so omnivorous? Soft fruits, nuts, wheat,, bulbs, the leading shoots of conifers, eggs, young birds, are all in the list. The black squirrel, which also is at large in more than one district, has a similarly catholic taste.
In the Garden Gardeners are finding it difficult, or impossible, to secure bean poles, and in smaller degree pea-sticks'. In such dearth the best device for beans is to put up two strong posts (or a triprd of weaker posts), to join them by two wires near the top and bottom and fix vertical strings. Old binder twine, which is in. plentiful supply, serves as well as any• other sort of string. Peas can be grown up stretched rabbit-wire if any is available. The latest authorities on potato seed seem to be strongly in favour of cutting all the bigger tubers, and it is suggested that eyes with a hinterland about the size of a matchbox are all that is required. Recent experiments with a number of different plants imply that the dibble, as against the trowel or spade, slightly delays growth at the early stages ; but it is a handy instrument that saves a deal of time.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
Postage on this Issue : -Inland and Overseas, Id.
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