Country Life

DERELICT ACRES.

Oxfordshire must be added to other counties where land is being allowed -to relapse into an Eden after the Fall. In the course of a brief visit last week I was made acquainted with two considerable farms, one of about 400, one of nearly 1,200 acres, for which no tenant could be found. The larger has not yet become waste land ; but the other is already a good deal worse than a prairie. Cultivation has been quite abandoned, and the usual successors to corn have made their appearance. For some reason not altogether easy to probe, cultivation favours the thistle. Even singularly clean and well-kept land will produce a lusty crop the very first year that it suffers neglect. This means that such land does not merely lie idle. It actively degenerates and each year will need more capital for the restoration of its old fertility. Fallowing without cleaning is as bad almost as cropping without manuring. Incidentally manuring means in derivation much the same as cleaning.

* * * * Similar relapses to prairie or worse may be seen—to give only my own personal experience—in Huntingdonshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Hertfordshire ; and examples are certainly to be found in Essex and Norfolk, and in most eastern counties. One of our greatest authorities on agri- cultural economics asked me, in reference to the derelict Oxfordshire farms, whether there was any remedy. He answered his own question by suggesting that the only method in present practice was that followed by one or two men who are controlling farms of 12,000 to 20,000 acres on the Wiltshire border. The plan is to destroy buildings or allow them to moulder, to reduce labour to the minimum ; and to treat a huge acreage either as a sheep run and a place to run store cattle for a short period, or to plough it with steam tackle, managed by peripatetic labour, and, omitting any rotation and the usual cleaning process, to allow the land to lie fallow for varying and indefinite intervals. Thoughtful critics of great knowledge cannot be lightly gainsaid. All one can answer is that the counsel is a counsel of despair.

* * * * Not far from one of these derelict farms is being carried out perhaps the most enterprising attempt in England to restore intensive fertility to a semi-derelict area. I hope at some time to be able to give some details of the economic results. They are at the worst remarkable ; and extremely careful accounts are kept and audited ; but at the moment the farm offers a pitiable example of the vulnerability to which all cultivators are liable. A very beautiful new hop garden, planted and equipped in a neighbourhood new to this most intensive of crops, succumbed to a strong and suddenly shifting wind. It is splendidly protected on the dangerous west and south-west side ; but this coward blow came at night from the east. As the farmer lay in bed he heard the poles crack and the wreckage fall ; and rose to find that his stout poles had snapped like matches, and his neat garden was a tangle of broken masts and rigging. A thousand pounds or two had clean vanished within a few moments.

* * * HUMBLE OR BUMBLE ?

In commenting on an ingenious and important pamphlet on Red Clover, I picked a bone with the authors on their preference of humble for bumble in describing the indispensable work of that engaging and " buccaneering bee." Mr. Martin Sutton takes up the point, not wholly in opposition. A part of his charming letter may be quoted :-

" A considerable time was spent when preparing my Bulletin in arriving at a decision as to which of these two expressions to use, and, as you quote Darwin in your amusing reference to maiden ladies and clover seeds, I may mention that Darwin, in his well- known Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, makes use of the expression Humble Bees on p. 73. I have also the support of the late Dr. Fream, Dr. J. Ritzema Bos (Holland), and the late Miss Ormerod. At the same time, I am perfectly willing to admit the English translation ' Bumble ' of the Latin word `Bombes ' is correct, and that to the man in the street the expression Bumble Bee is much better known. ' In Webster's International Dictionary, 1902, it is stated that the word bum IS old English, signifying ' droning or humming,' which, of course, would suggest the sound made by tho Bumble Bee, but certainly the word Humble seems to be more generally used by botanists. I notice it is also employed in the publications issued by the Welsh Plant Breeding Station at Aberystwyth, so if I am wrong I am in good company:.,

I quite agree that " humble " is generally preferred by the great. My ,point is that the common people have the better linguistic taste. Both sound and derivation in this instance support the vulgar tongue.

* * * * FEEDING Mans.

It is time for those who _feed birds in their gardens to prepare the bird tables ; for in my experience birds are seldom so ready to take advantage of such catering as at the time Of the early frosts. An unknown correspondent has sent me recently a list of birds noted in a Surrey garden, where a water dish and food are provided all the year round. The list is remarkable ; and it omits one bird that I personally associate especially with a certain Surrey garden—the greater spotted woodpecker. Here is the list. It will be hard to beat :— Gold-crested Wren. Wren.

Blackbird. Thrush.

Missel Thrush. Blue Tit. Great Tit. Cole Tit. Longtailed Tit. Bullfinch. Goldfinch. Chaffinch. Greenfmch. Hawfinch. Green Woodpecker. Nuthatch. Sparrow. Hedge Sparrow. Blackcap. Chiff-chaff.

* * AUSTRALIAN FLOWERS.

The nursery of English gardens—as well as, incidentally, of the human race—is China and Thibet, or at any rate that quarter of the world. The new and most gorgeous meconopsis has just come from there and " travellers " in plants are just setting out on fresh adventures. A writer in the Times urges the rival claims of Canada. I would put in a plea for Western Australia. It is true that I never enjoyed seeing any patch of flowers more than yellow lilies on the edge of the snow in the Selkirks—and never was so overwhelmed with the splendour of Autumn colouring as in Newfoundland in October ; but most of these admired plants and bushes have been long since imported. The currant and golden rod are hardly novelties ! In Western Australia, said to be richer in flowers than any quarter of the globe, the flowers are quite novel to English eyes ; and many, like some of the gorgeous mountains in the Selkirks, have no local names at all. Is there any reason why we should not be able to cultivate in England those queer velvety, oddly shaped and oddly coloured flowers, most typical of that lovely country, the kangaroo flowers, or again the so-called " blue bush," or even the violently coloured pea-vetches ? Do they refuse to grow in England ? or have botanists lacked enterprise ? Pheasant. Partridge. Kestrel. Rook. Jackdaw. Starling. Swallow. Swift.

Martin. Tree-creeper. Wood Pigeon. Dove.

Jay.

Brown Owl: Barn Owl. Robin.

Pied Wagtail. Flycatcher. Cuckoo. Wryneck. * *

A number of correspondents have written to ask how grass cuttings—or indeed any rubbish—may be converted into a useful manure. The discovery of a method was made at Rothamsted during the War, due in large measure to the interest and energy of Lord Elveden, now Lord Iveagh ; but since a research station is not and cannot be a selling agency, the discovery was exploited elsewhere and christened Adco. It was of real value to the community. I saw some of the early experiments when straw was treated with this chemical and bio-chemical material. Within a short time it assumed very much the appearance and tissue of farmyard manure ; and was found to possess both its chemical and mechanical qualities. Several queries reached me from overseas, especially Canada, where straw is regarded as useless and usually burnt. To-day, of course, the straw is often not cut at all, but the ears combed off and the straw burnt in situ or ploughed in. At the present small gardeners use the method more than farmers. W. BEACH Tnomea.