COUNTRY LIFE
A Record in Wheat
At a ploughing competition last week on the borders of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire three several farmers said to me that this year's was the best wheat harvest within their memory. Two of them qualified this—if it was a qualification —by emphasising that it was the best " bearing " harvest. The straw was not exceptional, the quality, though good was not supreme, but the yield was beyond the records of thirty-three years, according to one of the witnesses who had been farming " on his own " for just that period. Particular examples of yield were quoted, for farmers are not a class who deal in generalities. A fair number of acres on different farms yielded sixteen sacks or eight quarters. On the most famous wheat-bearing plains in the world a great deal less than half this yield would be considered a magnificent average. What was the reason why so rarely an abundant harvest came into being in a year when the weather was roundly abused in all counties ? If wheat is got into the ground in good time before winter, it develops so stout a system of roots that the plant can endure incorrigible weather. It may grow too fast and become " winter-proud," when it is vulnerable to heavy frosts ; and it may be drowned by excessive rains ; but in general it is in a strong position. Whether this well-established plant yields a light or heavy crop depends principally on the weather in July. It needs sun and can dispense with moisture while the bloom is on the ear. If weather is favourable at that date no acres in the world bear better than English.
Coarse Fishes A very good idea has been put forth by the official apostles of coarse fishing. Trout fishing is at an end for a while, and about this date it is the custom of many owners of trout streams to net as many " non-trouts " as possible. Even that aristocrat of the company, the greyling, may be sen- tenced. The work is thought necessary for several reasons : the stream produces only a certain amount of fish food and, generally speaking, the more the food the quicker the growth of the trout. The struggle for life below the water is severer than above it, and the devourers of the eggs of trout are many and voracious. An otter which is an eater of grown fish may actually benefit the trout population both by killing such fish and ridding the stream of egg-eaters. The netting of coarse fish is necessary if the precious trout are to be saved from a too stern competition ; but after all a very great many more people enjoy coarse fishing than trout fishing, and their sport is a finer and more delicate craft than enthusiasts for the dry fly generally acknowledge. All these netted fish have their value, though they are regarded as mere vermin. They certainly ought not to be destroyed. It should be possible, it should indeed be easy for the trout fishers to make arrange- ments with the coarse fishers so that these netted hordes might be transfemd alive to streams where thew• presence would be highly appreciated. The greediest and fiercest of coarse fish, to wit, the pike, has been annihilated. That powerful and long-lived fish—the shark of fresh waters—is a com- paratively easy victim to the expert. An old water-warden of my acquaintance stirred the admiration of a great fly- fisherman by noosing one after another in a rather weedy brook that had just been stocked with sizeable trout. The fisherman felt himself in the presence of a greater expert.
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Abbotsbury's Antiquity
A discussion has arisen over the continuity of the history of that great home of swans at Abbotsbury, in Dorset ; but there is no doubt, I think, that swans have bred there in many hundreds for four or five hundred years, probably much longer. It was an old and well-established breeding place when Queen Elizabeth reasserted her right to the ownership of the birds. The one real threat to the place is not flood as such but the destruction of the subaqueous grass that is the prime attraction. If we could imagine the place without its swans it would still remain unparalleled. The marvellous Chesil bank, the impregnable rampart that defends it, has incidentally created a lagoon which provides every variety of brackish water. The reeds and reedy surroundings of the antique but well preserved duck decoy at the freshwater side, give hospitality to some of the rarest of our small birds ; and you find within the confines encircling the swans, tern, which like one foot on sea and one on shore, duck of many sorts, who have an ideal lake in front of the decoy, and from time to time warblers not to be found even at Hickling Broad. The plan gives also ideal conditions to a good many water- loving plants. Does the Great Water Dropwort grow more lustily anywhere ? And it was a happy thought of the owners of the land to plant there the larger Libertia which looks as if it were native. The vast shingle bank should always defend this incomparable sanctuary from the calamity of invasion that befell some of the Norfolk Broads.
Popular Nightshade
Walking across a very rough piece of uncultivated ground one of us almost trod on a young pheasant that was already devouring the berries of the woody nightshade. I have often come upon the old birds eating the red ripened seeds ; but the taste for the green berries before the poison is ripened out of them is a new discovery. The plant is now exceedingly common ; and perhaps its spread is due to that potent seed- distributing agent, the bird. It is common in the hedgerows which it climbs successfully in spite of the absence of any of the usual apparatus of climbing plants. In one very tall hedgerow this summer its bright potato-like flowers appeared in the midst of a honeysuckle. In my own garden it has established itself in the midst of a hedge of Lonicera Nitida planted on previously open ground. The Deadly Nightshade is in my experience very much less common. It is often reported, but the name seems to be used freely by country people for either or both the bryonies, whose brilliant, poisonous berries strew most of our hedgerows at this season. * * * *
Large Families
An allusion made here recently to a discovery of I.C.I. research workers seems to have been misunderstood. They work on a " partridge farm " in a characteristic part of Hertfordshire ; and a careful following of the careers of the families bred there or thereabouts led to the conclusion that the parents could not look after more than twelve chicks, if the weather was unfavourable. Keepers were therefore advised to remove from the discovered nests all eggs in excess of a dozen. The trouble arose not from any difficulty in feeding a large family, but in protecting them from excesses of the weather. A mother can only play the umbrella to about twelve, and any youngster left out in the cold or rain was liable to all sorts of malady. One night of exposure might be fatal. It is curious how often—at least in my not very extensive experience —you find a clutch of exactly seventeen eggs. One such clutch in my neighbourhood was brooded by both birds who were seen sitting side by side on the eggs.
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In the Garden So many inquiries have reached me on the subject of plants that will flourish under trees that something more may be suggested. Of the cyclamens, the autumn-flowering sorts are the best for use underneath a single tree on a lawn ; but I believe the other sorts do no less well, and their leaves, apart from the flowers, are so comely that they arc worth growing in every garden. An advantage of the Persian cyclamens is that they grow very readily from seed. One beautiful patch that I saw this week under the north side of a country house were all grown from the seed of a single plant. The autumn flowering gentians do very well in a wood or a half-wood among trees. Crocuses look very beautiful under trees, and do all the better because the grass does not flourish in such places. I suppose that the hypericum, generally known as Rose of Sharon, is the most popular covering for shady places and it needs little attention beyond hard pruning in spring. The cyclamens also will grow without much attention but benefit much by a top dressing of sand and leaf-mould about six weeks before the flowers come. It is a confession of the sporting proclivities of the nation that the subject of bushes that will grow under trees has been much more fully studied than the question of flowering plants. Nevertheless the flourish set on the beauty of many woods is the wood anemone, the primrose and the bluebell ; and the model is worth the attention of the gardener.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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