COUNTRY LIFE
November Gifts
The hunt is up ; the close season over in practice as in law ; a ground frost or two has shrivelled the gourds, beans, and nasturtiums ; and the leaves fall. Nevertheless, those who follow the yearly habit of making a census of flowers, wild and tame, on November 1st will certainly be able to reckon 5o species in bloom ; and many more in the bigger gardens. Bladder Campion, brooms, scabious, and those irrepressible weeds, buttercup, ha'wkweed, so-called mayweed, are in flower, and some fields very freely dotted with yarrow, mostly white, but here and there a deep pink. Even an odd honeysuckle flower may be found and poppy from seed selfsown in late summer. In the garden all sorts of roses, including the common
ramblers, are in blossom and bits of poulsen are growing daily brighter. That earliest of bushes, viburnum fragrans, is very fragrant and very full of bloom, and an edging of alyssum is as yellow as ever it was. Gentians (ornata) that survived an untimely transplantation are flowering gorgeously. Some creepers, including vitis inconstans, have not yet stopped growing at the top though the lower leaves have turned purple. Who dare say that England has not a congenial climate ? * * * * Life Histories The hunt is up in spite of such relics of summer. Apropos, a very bright life of a fox has just been published.—Wild Lone. The Life of a Pytchley Fox, by B. B. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 7s. 6d.). I opened the volume and looked at the suggestive woodcuts just after reading an angry attack on the sport of hunting in a humanitarian document. It is one of the contra- dictions that must continually puzzle every countryman that most of the truer and more sympathetic life-histories of animals have been written by those who have shared in the chase and enjoyed it. The chief virtue of this book is the sum of sympa- thetic observation. Even Jefferies, always in part a mystic and at the end a complete mystic, never wrote better of animals than in his poaching days. This type of book has often been of very high quality indeed. Fortescue's Red Deer comes perhaps first ; but his company is large. Tregarthen wrote several beautiful life-histories ; and Henry Williamson deservedly made his name in this form of literature. Some say that hunting the fox is a vanishing sport, that barbed wire, poultry-keepers, paucity of horses, expense, pheasant-shooting, and public opinion will soon put an end to it. Perhaps, and there is a good deal to be said for the drag-hunt ; but the sport is in some regards more alive than ever it was, for there was never a time when pony clubs for children were more actively encouraged within the hunts.
* * * * Seabirds and Oologists In the last two numbers of its Bird Notes, which are always of interest, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has given a more than usually lengthy account of the denizens of the Bempton Cliffs, a marvellous haunt of sea-birds. One would have expected more emphasis on the very far-reaching lesson that old experience there brought out. It is a point that the oologists, who are always clamouring for public recog- nition (and forgiveness) should take to heart.. Now the guillemots and other sea birds provide a yearly harvest to a group of professionals, who of course are particularly anxious that the birds should not diminish. They were at one time diminishing very rapidly and certainly, until a definite date (in June) was fixed as the last day of egg-taking. The colonies increased, though the more complete legalising and organisa- tion of the trade greatly increased the actual numbers of eggs taken. The moral is that neither the' oologist, nor indeed the bird-photographer, should interfere with any nesting bird at a late date ; after which no other family can be born and bred. It is one of the curiosities of bird life that the guillemot, who lays only one egg, should continue to flourish exceedingly on both the East and West Coast, though gulls as well as man rob the nest (so to call it) ruthlessly. Is the bird, I wonder, very long lived ?
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Molly, Sickle and Runt
Local information is sought on three country words. First : Is the word " Molly," as applied to a hand-made mallet for driving in stakes, used outside the home counties ? What is its derivation, and has it synonyms ? Second : Is a " bagging
hook," which has, I believe, a number of verbal variants, the same as a sickle ? In my experience " sickle " is a word quite unused, and in some cases unknown by country workers. It has two forms. One is of heavier make and is used for such work as hedge trimming, the other, which ought to have a crank near the handle end, is lighter and used for cutting grass or weeds. Thirdly : What local names are in existence for the smallest pig of a litter ? Personally, I am familiar with three : Anthony, runt and (in the West) Nishpin. It has been said that the agricultural labourer knows only about four hundred words. He is, of course, or was, astonishingly ignorant of words that have in them any touch of abstraction or a Latin derivation. The word " obedient," for example, conveyed no impression to a particular labourer's wife. On the other hand, he knows a good many out-of-the-way words, such, for example, as the name of various parts of scythe and plough.
Cheap Butterflies At a sale of butterflies last week astonishment was expressed that a specimen of the Milkweed or Monarch butterfly went for so small a sum as £3. I have seen a case-full of these fine butterflies all caught on the west coast of Britain ; and the auctioneer seemed to agree with the man of science who showed him his numerous collection, that the insects had—in A.P.'s phrase—" gone frantic and flown the Atlantic." I wonder. The butterfly is very common in both South and North America and when one sees it on the wing on an Argentine ranch one is no longer astonished at the accounts of its thousand or two miles of migration north and south in those great continents. But the Atlantic ? It is, of course, certain that the Atlantic was crossed somehow or other, and in one bumper year over a score were collected in Britain. That they came by ship seems the more plausible explanation, though, of course, they may have flown over, thus excelling any bird. On the general subject of oversea migration of both moths and butterflies the year has brought further proof of the regular occurrence of such journeys by a considerable number of species. The trouble is to find any reason for such journeys. There is no parallel with the bird which must migrate or perish. * * * * Canadian Squirrels
In this country we think well of the red and ill of the grey squirrel, though it is true that the red, too, is capable of offen- sive actions, even in England. The contrary experience comes from Canada, where finally a reward was given for every brown squirrel's tail. It was estimated that at least 7o per cent. of the birds' nests were robbed. " I can't give any evidence against the grey squirrel, but I have seen its cousin, the red squirrel, here destroy 3o per cent. of my apple crop one year, one bite to an apple ; devour cherries, kill young birds and eat the brain ; and take eggs from birds' nests and suck them—all these not once or twice but many times. Some years ago we had a plague of squirrels. I shot 300 on my farm. Every morning I was roused by a squirrel trying to climb the post of my verandah to get at the swallows' and blue-birds' nests."
* * * * In the Garden In a beautiful old-fashioned garden in Hampshire a number of beds in the lawn are enclosed by little hedges. There is a formal patch where the pattern is made by the usual dwarf box ; but the separate beds are encircled, one by honeysuckle, one by myrtle. Since that garden was made a new sort of honeysuckle, Lonicera nitida, has come into fashion. There are scornful people who deny that it is a hedge plant in any real sense. They say that its tendency to " flop " (like one of Dickens's characters) precludes it from the class. There are fairly firm hedges of it five feet high ; but it needs extremely frequent and clever pruning to reach any stiffness at such a height. However this may be, it makes a neat and charming edge if kept severely low ; and has some advantages even over box. Though it is exacting, the shears must be kept going. One advantage of the plant is that it can be multiplied to any extent. Every cutting roots at once. It is sometimes complained that box edgings collect snails ; but if snails are many, it is best to know just where they can be found, on the principle of the London police, who like to herd criminals
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