COUNTRY LIFE
AN early harvest has one advantage of which, as far as I know, nothing has been said: birds, especially sparrows, have not quite reached that definite period in seasonable dietetics when animal food is given up for vegetable. An attempt has been made recently to whitewash the sparrow, on the ground that it, too, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, is a great eater of meat. And this is true; but it is also true that their flesh-fed families pour out of the towns in August and consume immense quantities of grain. At the worst one may see a wide belt round the edge of a corn- field robbed of quite half its weight of food ; and the shock is an ideal arrangement for grain-eating birds. It gives a firm stance and concen- trated supplies of food. These migrations seldom take place early, and when they come the migrants may find the cupboard bare and have to be content with gleaning. Even at this endeavour they are up against serious competitors in local poultry-keepers gleaning for their fowls. Indeed it is complained that robberies from the standing corn have been considerable: the hen has been worse than the sparrow, though at one remove.
Quick Harvest
The speed of harvest is a great saviour of grain, and in such a year as this there is little reason for leaving the sheaves for the traditional interval in shocks. Perhaps, to the great loss of the beauty of harvest, the shock is a departing glory. A large number of the new harvester-threshers are at work, and unlike the older types they are neat and small enough to pass through ordinary gateways and work in small irregular fields. It has, of course, been proved possible to cut, thresh and plough all in one concerted operation, and in such a scheme the stubble as well as the shock would disappear. However. such a single action harvest is not likely to be a common sight ; but the tendency is for the plough to follow the cutter-and-binder at a shorter and shorter interval. This summer's harvest, certainly the biggest in extent for at least a generation, is likely to be one of highest in yield, and by reason of its speed to be one of the most conservative, a sparrow-starving harvest. It is also one of the most beautiful, thanks in part to the rare fulness and greenness of summer foliage.
A Butterfly Month
The summer of this year will be historic in the annals of students of butterflies and moths. Every countryman has ocular evidence of the numbers of certain species: in my experience of hurnet moths, of lesser coppers, of commas and peacocks ; and the meadow-browns (some very freakishly coloured) are in even greater sohorts than the common whites. Rarities are reported from all over the country. The latest I have heard of is a striped Hawk moth, seen by a member of the Wiltshire Education Committee. It is very rare at any time, and appeared in June, nearly two months before the normal date. If we may judge by the hilarious hawking of the many swifts (more numerous than the swallows) at great heights in the air insects are common also in spheres beyond our reach.
Country Words A good old satisfying country word that is in some danger of extinction is "mow." It is almost unknown, I think, in Southern England, in spite of the song of Barley Mow, but a student of farming in Southern Shropshire tells me that it is still common in his district, where both shock and stook are unknown words. In that district, too, sickle seems to be used more widely than elsewhere.
In the Garden
One of the quaintest sights in the garden is a butterfly laying its eggs with speed in a sticky pattern on a cabbage leaf ; and it suggests that those who wish to save their greens from destruction would be wiser to dust the leaves free of eggs than to wait for the caterpillars, which are both messy and destructive. Probably more out-of-door tomatoes have ben grown than ever before ; and so many new recruits spend their energies in interfering with the plants unnecessarily that it is a relief to read a protest against excessive " defoliation " in an admirable little book of instruction (Outdoor Tomato Cultivation, by J. Hardy. Quality Press, 5s.). Leaves at the bottom are best removed if they are liable to touch the earth ; but if the plants are at a respectable distance no more leaf-cutting may be needed till the fruits are a good size and need all the sun they can get for a final ripening. In any case early leaf pruning is usually a mistake, unless the foliage is quite excessive. It merely Postage on this issue : Inland and Overseas, id.
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