COUNTRY LIFE
A Rural Banker
On a cold day in February last I saw a vigorous and—you
ould say—youthful visitor to a spacious garden in Hertford- shire looking into every likely bush and tod in the hope of finding an early thrush's nest. Last week I read in the financial columns of The Times that the new chairman of Barclays Bank was " essentially a country banker." Well, Bismarck (a great authority on the feeding habits of tits),
Theodore Roosevelt (who once asked me to search Oyster Bay with him for tanagers) and Lord Grey (the author of that
great book, The Charm of Birds) were doubtless in their extremely different ways all better statesmen for their interest in natural history. From the zeal with which those February bushes were inspected for non-existent nests 'I infer that bankers are also better bankers for cultivating this best of hobbies, the observation of birds. Very many managers of local banks—such is my experience—are good countrymen. Did not this traffic with the land as manager of the country branch of a bank help to make Sir James !Mitchell one of the best and most popular Prime Ministers ever known in the Countryman's Paradise of Western
Australia ? * *
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