COUNTRY LIFE
Country Prosperity I should doubt whether at any tiny.: in the social annals of this island there had been so little unemployment in country places. In a great number of parishes it is quite impossible to secure such a luxury—if that is the word—as a garden boy or to secure any casual labour whatever, for the hay crop, the garden or what you will. The building of a number of country cottages is quite held up by the dearth of brick- layers and their labourers. In one case a man was secured at last, from Ireland, and directly he arrived he telegraphed for his brother to join him. The immigration from Ireland for fruit picking and such seasonal occupations is always considerable. ' It is likely to be much larger than usual this year. In a good many places, especially towards the west, the agricultural labourer is disappearing very much in advance of the la& of demand. He is not easy to secure even by those wisely generous employers who are willing to give a good ten shillings more than the standard wages. That such lack of labour (or excess of employment) should be juxtaposed to so much unemployment is "a thing imagination boggles ' at." For various reasons, not easy to be rid of, our urban workers are singularly immobile, even if they desire work on the land.
Big Trout, and Little Fishermen in Norfolk-Suffolk and in Wiltshire streams have had sharply-contrasted experiences this season, especially in the mayfly weeks. One of the greater achievements in East Anglia was the capture—on the dry fly—of a four-and-a-half pound trout, a monster as trout go in most English streams. On parts of the Wiltshire Avon the trout have been much thinner and lighter than of old ; and though the theories on the loss of weight are many, it may be presumed that lack of suitable food is the chief trouble. Some fishers support the subtle theory that the birds, especially the sparrows, are to blame. Farming thereabouts, they say, is so poor that there is no food for. the birds ; and they have migrated to the river banks and the clumps of osier, where they live on the insects. It is a difficult theory ,:o believe, but it is certain that when the mayfly were up there was a sparrow or two on every bush, hawking the fly—and the spectacle is quite unusual. On some of the streams near London—the Lea, for example— trout have grown prodigiously, and the waters are full of food of many sorts, the chief trouble there is that the bed i too muddy for breeding. There are no clean, sandy, gravelly little inlets such as are desired for nurseries.
Haysel Excesses
A bumper hay-crop such as appears in stooks all over England, has its .drawbacks ; and at best does not delight the farmer's heart as it did when a stack of good old hay might sell for a hundred pounds, and be worth more to feed the stock. The bumper nature of the crop is quite general, but while in watery meadows there is a "wasteful and ridiculous excess," the drier fields carry an ideal weight of grass. A cynical farmer has said that his chief desire is for a poor crop. If it is light enough, the sun will dry it without the intervention of fork or tedder ; and it can be carted almost directly from the swath in the minimum of time. Yet some farmers are left who agree with Bottom in his immortal panegyric : "Good hay, sweet hay, bath no fellow " ; and rejoice in the immensity of the crop where they cut early and had labour to spare. Some of us have seen smallholders, very small holders, on the West Coast of Ireland, separating the weeds from the straw of their oats in order to make a haystack ! In England scores of fields of hay are going abegging. There is no one to cut them and make them and carry them.
Partridge Victims
The early cutting has been disastrous to some of the denizens. On one great sporting estate in Norfolk—a county that has seldom seen so much hay, for it is not an ideal grass district—the destruction of nests has been pitiful. On one single drive a good thousand eggs were cut open early in June, in the course of the hay-harvest. The figures arc eloquent of the suitability of the climate and surfacc of the county for this species, which is essentially a creature that delights in good fanning. What will happen to these clutchless pairs ? The partridge is perhaps the most philo-progenitive of all birds, and when pursued by ill-fortune will go on laying full clutches of eggs up till late in September. We may nurse two hopes : one, that the second clutch will be duly hatched, though in late July instead of early June ; two, that the first of October will be substituted for the first of September, which is too early in most years. The later dates are of course usually preferred on larger shooting estates, and where walking partridges is a forgotten habit. Modern machines are so much more deadly than the scythe that they may destroy not only nests, but the animals them- selves. In one field of lucerne, which was full of partridges' nests, I saw several rabbits killed by the blades. Whether they were dazed by the noise and rattle or unaware of the length of the cutting shears I do not know.
Epicurean Foxes Mowers are not the only enemies of the nesting partridge. On one estate this morith seventeen partridge nests, of those under observation, were taken by foxes. In every single instance the eggs were just about to hatch. What does this mean ? Does it mean that the foxes have the nests under observation and have no interest in the eggs till the young within them are well developed ? Or does it mean that the foxes do not discover the nests till late ? The partridge has the habit of the dabchick, or for that matter of the great crested grebe, and covers up her eggs when she leaves them ; but she does not do this all through the period. It is perhaps most probable that the fox discovers the nest by his power of scent, and if this is so the nestful must begin to smell perceptibly only towards the end of the period of incubation. It is a cruel fortune for the birds, a grim example of sic vos non vobis. On occasion the fox, or at any rate the vixen, will carry eggs unbroken to the earth. She is a born retriever, as one may test in the case of a captured fox. Even a cub will carry a tennis ball quite gently and bring it back on command.
A Great Egg Collection
I hear that clutches of kites' eggs arc being offered for sale to oologists ; and it is pleasant to know, are being refused. The kite is virtually extinct as an English breeding bird, though it has made several attempts to breed with us in recent years. The man with the gun, the egg-collector and the bird photographer have all on different occasions been re- sponsible for the bird's disappearance. Oblogy is a legitimate science enough. The case for it has been very persuasively stated by Mr. Edgar Chance in a small pamphlet ; and he now opens his marvellous egg collection to public inspection ; complete clutches of eggs of over a hundred and eighty species are shown ; and a great many clutches of some sorts. Since the number of species that breed with us is only about two hundred and a number of these breed rarely, the collection may be said to be as complete as its owner desires to make it. It is remarkable—as it seems to me—that the red shrike, whose clutches have a peculiar attraction for oologists, is one of the birds that seems to be increasing. It has certainly been unusually numerous in the last two or three years, in my neighbourhood. Mr. Chance, who is exhibiting his collec- tion on June 25th and 26th at Bullwell, Burchett's Green, Berk- shire, desires to find a permanent home for his collection, and asks for suggestions.
Nightingale Now
Those of our oversea visitors, or others, who wish to hear the nightingales (which are unusually numerous) have their last chance. The bird already begins to grow hoarse; and our sweetest singers, especially lark and nightingale, can be very harsh indeed. It is a well-recorded event that years ago Mr. Burroughs, the greatest of American field-observers of birds, stayed in London just too long and missed the nightingale he had come over to England to hear. The birds begin to sing at a later and later hour as surnmrr deepens.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
Previous page
