COUNTRY LIFE
THE arrival of spring—dated last Monday—means probably more to the cottage gardener than even to the poets. He is a diarist who does not put pen to paper. The phenomena of previous springs are written, as the Greeks would have said, on the tablets of his mind. All seasons of the year are included in his most accurate memory ; but a few weeks round about the opening of official spring matter supremely in his garden, and the so-called landless labourer, robbed of his bit of the common field, at any rate retains his garden and looks to it for a good deal of his food. The greatest boon that any Government could confer on present- day labourers would be to increase the gardens. A quarter-acre would suffice in place of the four acres that was decreed for " statesmen" in the more spacious days of Elizabeth. With what fond pride one such gardener, on the second day of spring, pointed out to me his well-rolled onion bed. He regarded this spring, which promised to be very precocious, as, on the whole, neither early nor late. Though pears and gooseberries were dangerously forward, most of the trees have shown few signs of antici- pating their proper dates.
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