COUNTRY LIFE By the doorway the flowers of the guelder
(Viburnum Fragrans) are sweet with a breath of spring that contrasts strangely with the most autumnal various toadstools that have appeared on the lawn. To drag in two more seasons the winter jasmine is out against the wall and a number of roses are in seductive bud and flower both in the rose garden and on the wall, where Mermaid is as irrepressible as the Poulsen polyanthuses. Few of us, perhaps, remember to have enjoyed such fine dishes of mushrooms in November, though floriferous Novembers are common enough ; and Martinmas frequently introduces a warm spell. The precocity of growth is a cause of some alarm in the vegetable garden. Those gardeners— and they are usually numerous—who insist on planting-out their spring cabbages before the recommended date find them already almost big enough to cut. What will be their winter fate if the time is bitter with frost?
Deus Ex Machina The public, under the influence of newspapers as different as the Countryman and the Daily Express, are a good deal worked up on the subject of the County Agricultural Committees, now endowed with most unpopular powers against which there is no appeal. Should they continue after the war? To express a purely personal view I feel about them as I felt originally about the League of Nations. It would have done incalculable good—and no harm—if its first concern had been such practical concerns as international hygiene, transport, labour, animal preservation and the rest. So with these County Agricultural Committees. Their help in providing labour and machines is and would always prove invaluable, just as the Russian collective farms have been saved by the motor supply depots scattered about the country. England would be less England if the smallholder or farmer were eliminated ; but his economic value may largely depend on the use of machines which he cannot and ought not to buy. If the committees emphasised this side of their work before proceeding to exercise more political functions they might serve a national purpose in keeping the land in good heart, as farmers say, and well drained. They might literally play the part of a deus ex machina.
African Novelties
Here is a postscript to letters previously quoted from a soldier naturalist in North Africa. " I had a grand walk along the river. There was some good scrub thorn along the banks in which I saw a new sort of Babbler with a white head and a pretty pale yellow weaver. On sand banks were pelicans, hundreds of Marabou storks, Abdin's stork, my old friend, the Skimmer, and one blacktailed godwit, which should have been nesting in Europe." This naturalist and others are adding a good deal to our knowledge both of species and of their migrations, for some of our moths as well as our birds have their other home in Africa. " Something new " comes out continually as of old.
A Sleeping Attitude
Here is a query that ought to be easily answered. Do birds sleep with the head " under " the wing? My experience for what it is worth is that they often tuck their heads well into the feathers of the wing but do not thrust it under the wing. However, other observers, including " B. B.," equipped perhaps with a shrewder night vision, refer from time to time to the under-wing habit in various species, poultry for example, and swallows. Doubtless the species may vary in this regard as in others, but I should have said that most birds do not so completely cloak their heads, though it is not easy to see whether the head disappears into the feathers or behind the bone of the wing.
In the Garden Most gardeners and all wise gardeners practise the habit of setting out young lettuces in frames or under cloches or out of doors to the end of enjoying them in the early spring. The danger is not that they are killed by cold but that they damp off. The most successful grower I know holds that lettuces resemble frame violets, which do best if water is wholly withheld. They enjoy a winter sleep that needs little fresh air and no water. A present absurdity in the garden is that marrows are still flowering and even setting fruit, and pumpkins ripening along with out-of-door tomatoes—in November! No gardener should omit to sow broad beans this month. The crop used to be thought a little bit of a gamble, but the cloche makes it a certainty. W. BEACH THOMAS.
Postage on this issue : Inland and Overseas, rd.
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