COUNTRY LIFE
The Year's Recovery
Evidence of the power of recovery in things has delighted the eyes in all directions this July. Harvest fields grow white and golden with level and healthy crops in fields that were regarded not long since as lost acres. Some of the oats will be cut this week, and never had farmers better cause to rejoice that our climate permits grain to be sown in the autumn. Those crops are as good in many places as the spring-sown crops are bad. The gardener has had like experiences. Very valuable shrubs— some Japanese bush-wistaria are an example—were so shorn by frost that they were thought to be dead. They are now in splendid leaf. The roses—pruned, frost-bitten, and pruned again—delayed their flowering a whole month, but the July bloom is magnificent. The one plant that could not recover was the grass ; and the absence or postponement of the use of the mowers has saved the life of many a nest, in a year when game- birds have hatched with rare success.
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Farming Facts The wholly adm table Agricultural Register (University Press, 5s.) now published yearly by the Oxford Economics Research Institute has been altered a little in form and substance in order to tell us more about the commodities themselves. One of the stranger facts is that though a number of farms in the Home Counties have been converted from general farms into poultry farms, both eggs and poultry show signs of diminishing. We import almost exactly half our eggs and the number is fantastic. There it perhaps little doubt that the industry has been danaged, not by any economic cause ; but by mistakes in breeding. The problem is partly, eugenic. Artificial incuba- tion, though of immense benefit to the industry, brought with it certain dangers, and the vitality of the stocks suffered a serious fall. Such errors have been realised ; but the industry is still in need of planning. In any agricultural industry the multiplication of infirm stocks may easily occur. Strawberry plants, for example, lost nearly half their fertility by careless reproduction during the War. A hundred years or so ago, as we now know, the country was thickly sprinkled with a type of walnut tree that is virtually useless. It would have been just as easy to multiply a good variety. Breeding chicks from yOung pullets' eggs may have done this sort of harm. Such things need a watchful eye from some central authority.
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An Intelligent Blackbird Cats and birds, as we all know, do not happily consort together (though occasional friendships have been recorded) ; but no species of bird has quite such a polemical hatred of the cat as the blackbird. One of my neighbours saw a black- bird actually attack a cat and finally perch on its back to the end of better pecking. A charming story of this hostility reaches me from Kingham. A garden there has been very carefully wired against cats and the birds are very tame. One hen blackbird which has brought off a succession of broods spends a good deal of time looking in at the kitchen, its chief source of supply for the hungry family. The other day, it was heard making angry noises, and when the owner of the garden was attracted, the bird flew in short stages, looking back at each stop, till it reached the gate. Immediately outside prowled the cat that had roused the blackbird's anger, though wire and gate still kept it a safe distance. If the bird con- sciously drew human attention to the approaching danger, we must judge the bird to be as intelligent on occasion as the dog, which certainly will call men to its aid.
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Sick Clover Some odd discoveries have been made by research workers at Rothamsted in regard to that widespread malady of the farm known as, clover sickness. To speak roughly, wherever this disease appeared the land has to be rested from clover for a great many years. The disease, which has been investigated for at least eighty years, has been attributed both to a particular fungus and to eelworm. Both these causes are operative ; but two other more essential causes have now been indicated. Both are curious. One is that the bacilli which make nodules on the roots of clover and other such plants and give the plant one of its chief virtues are of two strains. One strain does little work, is almost a drone, and this lazy strain is apt to overcome
the better and beneficent strain. The other cause, indicated but not yet wholly corroborated, is that clover does actually impregnate the soil with a secretion that is poisonous to itself, Inoculation of crops by the better strain of microbe has been successfully tried ; and doubtless some way of neutralising the poisonous secretion, so to call it, will be found.
The Eels' Migration An allusive reference the other day to the mystery of the eels' migration has brought so many queries that I am persuaded to explain. At certain periods elvers swim up many Western rivers in myriads ; and, incidentally, there has been an eager demand for them from the Continent, where the eel is a very popular form of food. It was a mystery for centuries where these eels came from. It was then discovered by a Scandinavian fisherman that a little fish-like thing found in the Atlantic was in reality an eel that a little later in life suffered a sea-change. This enabled the discoverer to penetrate the whole mystery. When the spawning instinct and desire comes upon them, the mature eels migrate to particular deep holes in the Atlantic. They will travel even over considerable stretches of land to reach the rivers and so the sea. Eels both from Europe and America spawn in these Atlantic depths. The American progeny soon after birth swim to America and the European young to Europe, taking a good part of two years over the journey and changing form. The parents never return. How these myriads of fry receive a prompting to seek, say, the estuary of the Severn is " a thing imagination boggles at."
Milk Wool
The land history of Denmark for the last fifty years or so is a record of continuous intensification. Mr. Sorensen, one of the present authorities, gave me the story of his own farm in this regard. His father had a farm of forty-one acres which with difficulty supported seven cows, a breeding sow and a few sheep. The cows have grown so far as I remember to seventeen, the pigs are numerous and the sheep have been discarded. This is the sort of increase that has been going on all over the country, and it is amazing how much stock a small farm will carry if everything is laid out for providing fodder. The economy even in respect of grass is illustrated for all beholders by the tethering of the cattle on the grass land. They must eat methcdically and tho- roughly ! More than once the abolition of sheep was quoted as a sign of intenser production. It may be taken as a sort of symbol that wool is now being made from milk ; and the price given for milk for that purpose is higher than it has ever been. The greatest believers in it are the Italians. The wool has the advantage of not shrinking ; but in making cloth a percentage of 25 per cent. or so of real wool appears to be thought best. The inexpert (at whom Bradford would scoff) find difficulty in distinguishing the real from the synthetic.
In the Garden The brave—but outrageous—confession " do not like ramblers "—is made in a charming little garden-book, recently published (Gardener's Nightcap, by Muriel Stuart. Jonathan Cape, 8s. 6d.). It is a statement that perhaps deserves some investigation. Such a large number of hybrid teas and other solid-flowered roses have now been given the climbing habit that they may well be preferred before any rambler so called when it is a question of decorating a pergola or a wall. The earliest of all the type was the Gloire de Dijon, for which still we must nurse an 'affection, though we are told that it is entirely superseded by Climbing Paul Lede. A score or so of popular bedding roses have varieties that climb lustily enough. Ophelia, Madame Herriot and Mrs. J. Grant are examples. The best of the red-flowered climbers, as it seems to me, is Climbing Richmond ; and certainly something is lost if a rambler, such as the excellent Excelso, is substituted for it. But who can dislike Ramblers if they are allowed to ramble? They are best on a bank. In my garden is a bank of which half is covered with Cotoneaster horizontalis, half with Ramblers; and the ramblers make the more-enduring screen : some are as nearly as may be evergreen, and they flower in great profusion., Not to like them so placed is an impossibility for anyone, however
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