COUNTRY LIFE
THE more I have looked into it, the more excellent appear to me the scheme and particular plans of the Youth Service Volunteers. Many thousand boys and guis between the ages of 15 and 20 are volunteering to spend their holidays in country camps from which amusement and work on the land can be enjoyed. The additional variety of country labour in war-time has been sound help. There was a girls' camp for fruit-pickers in the Wisbech area ; a mixed camp in Dorset from which both the boys and girls did good work in flax-pulling ; a. boys' camp above the Thames in Bucks, where most congenial work was at hand in cutting larch for pit-props and other forestry work ; a very large hut- ment camp in Northants, where mixed farmwork as well as forestry was at hand, and here some urban boys took up permanent work on the farms. As an example of the highly detailed welfare work in the camps, the boys are provided with a proper shower-bath and the girls with a shoulder-high spray! In some of the camps earnings and allow- ances exceeded expenses ; in some there was a moderate deficit. This year a public appeal is being made (from .19 Cowley Street, S.W. r) in order to provide one full-time training centre where production work may be done and staff trained. In general, it may be claimed, I think,
that the psychological influence of these camps is of the highest value, - especially in regard to the factory workers.
Shropshire Limes What is to be done with trees when they reach their term? Some of the most pleasing lines and avenues that 1 know decorate." The Quarry,',' so called, at Shrewsbury, and they are known to many thousands of visitors who flock to the greatest of all provincial flower-shows. (Incidentally, I never regretted any printer's error more than the substitution of. elms for limes in a reference to these trees in a recent book.) There is some talk of felling these trees on the ground that they may be becoming dangerous. It is to be hoped that they will be allowed to reach their full term. Trees have shorter lives than short-lived man is disposed to think. Yews and oaks may approach a thousand years, but many soft- wood trees are old at a hundred years and quite decrepit at two hundred. It is, I think, generally granted that Shropshire is more remarkable fox big and old trees than any other county.
Horse Sense The following story of animal friendship is sworn to by a high dignitary of the Church, and so must be believed. Two hunters stalled side by side became fond friends, as their gestures proved. The day came when one of them was turned loose in a paddock that came up to the stable door. The stable had a half-height -door which enabled the prisoned horse to see his lucky friend, who much enjoyed his grazing. ' And he wished the other to share, so he pulled d'&eat tussock of grass and dropped it over the low door for his less fortunate friend. Who said that there was no such thing as unselfishness in the brute creation?
A New War-Time Newspaper 1 A new newspaper deserves some recognition. It is called The New
Straitsman. It is described as a "Wall newspaper and review of the Dover Services Centre." What is remarkable about this excellent pro- duction is that it is not of the usual type in which war-time interests and battle-scene illustrations predominate ; but, in large measure, literary and cultural, With the Happy Warriors' "master bias" towards "home-felt pleasures and to gentle scenes." Doubtless the paper is true to the note of the sailor's and the soldier's affections.
In My Garden On the thrilling subject , of cabbage-stalks, which defy decay in the compost heap, a soldier assures me that in Yorkshire he has seep patriotic householders using them as kindling! Perhaps the amount of sulphur in the cabbage-stalk (the cause of its ungracious smell) helps them to burn fiercely. To shift to a more aesthetic theme, the writer and illustrator of a most gorgeous book on flowering shrubs_ (Trees and Shrubs Throughout the Year, Lindsay Drummond, zrs.)‘makes an omission that is common, as it seems to me, to most writers on the subject. They all praise ',Viburnum carlesil and all • omit reference to V. fragrans. Now fragrans is the hardier, and begins to flower in December, quite three months before carlesii. I should class it as the most valuable of all the winter flowers. I have one at my front door which is nine feet high and
always full of sweet flowers in January, however harsh. - W. BEACH THOMAS.
Postage on this issue: Inland, W.; Overseas, id.
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