COUNTRY LIFE
JUNE came in like September. The lawn was well-patched with spider- webs, bedewed with gems, and the sun slowly conquered the dampness. Yet it is an early June. One rose in the garden—the quaint Pteracanthus —had quite finished flowering ; dog-roses were plentiful on the common, and that sweet, useful, thornless bush-rose, Zephyrine Drouhin, was in full flower when June arrived. It is traditional that the first gooseberry- tart is cooked for Whit-Sunday, but this year it was two or even three weeks early. The haysel will be early—too early for the partridges— though it is not likely to be very luxuriant. On the whole, the corn, especially the wheat, has surpassed the grasses, and is abnormally high for the season. The promise of a bountiful harvest—never more earnestly desired—is good. Even the potatoes (but not the strawberries) which were blackened by. May frosts are now as high and greeii as you would expect from an unchecked crop. The constant epithet of " flaming June " would be as popular in the South- and East as rain in the North-West, where one of the first long droughts within memory has been recorded.
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