COUNTRY LIFE
IT WAS said to a farmer, as the two looked at a field of wheat flattened by the heavy rains : "You'll need a scythe to deal with that." He answered: "Not a hit, I shall need a harvester-thresher." The farmer was doubtless right. These new, ugly, untidy, but desperately efficient machines are now furnished with an ingenious device that lifts the straws before the cutter reaches them, and a part at any rate of the trouble is resolved. Some fields look as if they had been battered by a circulat tornado, and the laid straws point every way to defeat the most intelligent of machines. Yet when all is said, the harvest is likely to be heavy enough to repay extra labour if, but only if, sunshitw succeeds. The ears are more than usually full and weighty, and a good many fields are upright enough ; and now of a glorious colour. Some, of course, especially in East Anglia. are too glorious with poppies, for wet weather is more favourable to weeds than to wheat. For example, in my neighbourhood the wheat in our upstanding crop is out-topped by the wild scabious which carries flowers of a garden size and brightness. The wild carrot— a very attractive plant, especially when flower turns to seed—is more frequent, and bears larger discs than I have ever known ; and beside it, in one field, are plants of the wild mignonette over five feet in height. Unusually fine bouquets containing a score and more of wild flowers were to be seen at a village flower-show. Among thern4he harebells were like garden campanulas.
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