COUNTRY LIFE

A Spring Diary How crowded with events is the countryman's calendar— if any Markhanis and Gilbert Whites are left—at such a season as this when a few days of dry warmth succeed a long period of cold and wet ! The hedges of quick and briar become a screen, almost instantly it seems. The kexes, that were little tufts of green, flower two feet in the air. The bluebells show blue before we noticed that they had any flowers. The birds, which have nested very late, build at a speed sympathetic with the growth of plants. It will, perhaps, prove a prolific year, for years differ in this regard among animals as among plants. This aspiration is suggested by a single example. A neighbour's favourite robin has laid a _clutch of seven eggs, which is• one more than the generally accepted maximum. Other birds are more wasteful. Every year we pick up starlings' eggs laid promiscuously on the lawn or where not. This year both blackbirds and thrushes began dropping eggs about the place long before nests were built or even started; * * * *

The Story of a Viola

The best of a garden is that very small things may give very great pleasure. For example. Some two or more years ago a kind correspondent sent me a yellowish violet unseen before, and asked for the name and nature. Kew Gardens supplied me with the answers ; and under bond of secrecy the place of discovery was communicated. From the tiny specimen that I took to Kew remained with me a yet tinier portion, no bigger than a blade of cut grass. It was most carefully put into a pot with finger and thumb ; and against all hope took root and later was planted out. Then, if the confession must be made, it was quite forgotten. This week the humble plant announced itself almost loudly, a creamy patch of flowers looked out for all to see from under the partial shadow of a diplopappas. This rare variety of viola sulphurea has established itself and is rooting at the end of runners ten inches long in a seductive circle round the original plant.

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A Reversed Bulb

The garden supplies odd as well as pleasant things. In a neighbour's garden two daffodil bulbs were inadvertently planted upside down and barely below the surface. The inverted position did not in the least decrease the activity of growth. The shoots both thrust the bulbs quite out of the ground and themselves after starting downwards curled upwards and were likely to flower some five inches to the side of the bulbs. The shoots took more kindly to the earth than the roots to the air ; but they may make up now that the right position has been restored. The yellow part of the stems grows green and there is some straightening of the curve. It used to be held by country folk that if you planted primulas upside down the flowers changed hue ; but there is no sign of these daffodils being either red or blue !

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Grass-Driers

Among those who expect much from grass-drying are the Oxford University economists. They do not discuss the device from the point of view of the fruit-grower, but made a sort of census of grass-driers on the farms, found about fifty at work and made an inquest into the results in some selected instances. They are not dogmatic, but see real national progress in this answer to the handicap of wet seasons. Young dried grass may much reduce the import of winter fodder. No other food is more palatable to stock if rightly supplied. The little booklet on grass-drying is a very good example of the ingenious skill of these Oxford research workers. There is no modern development of the technique of husbandry that they do not investigate forthwith.

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A Brave Bird

What is the most courageous bird ? The question is suggested by a queer incident that follows a similar act recorded near the same spot a few years ago. A gardener potting in his shed saw a large rat cross the floor furiously attacked by a blackbird. He left the scene for a moment to fetch a stick; when he came back the rat ,umped at the blackbird, almost

like a cat and caught it. In an instant another blackbird flew to the rescue and attacked the rat yet more furiously and routed it. The birds undoubtedly had a nest near by, as in the other incident referred to, when a marauding cat was attacked by a blackbird which finally clung to the cat's back and inflicted enough pain to rout the cat altogether. It made no attempt like the rat to fight the bird. Most birds are brave in defence of the young. I have seen a hedge- sparrow or dunnock attack an adder, and moorhen fly at a boy. The partridge will attack the crow and the swallow the cat. Parental courage is indeed common to all life above the insects which for the most part never see their young.

Distant Songs

The blackbird has another quality that has never—in my experience—been more emphatic than this spring. For some reason both blackbird and thrush have been singing well into the night, have shouted into the car of those who went forth to find the nightingales. A good many thrushes indeed, to my knowledge, have been mistaken for nightingales—a well-deserved, if unintended, compliment. The blackbird's song, which could scarcely be mistaken for any other, so much nearer is it to human music, carries, I should say, further than any other. You hear through the open window an hour after sunset that mellow flute and believe it to come from the garden or at furthest the paddock ; but on seeking a nearer audience you find that the bird is in a hedge across the next wide field. Five or six hundred yards were not a wide enough interval to disparage the quality of the notes. Nearer nightingales and thrushes were quite inaudible to the grosser ear. * * *

A Precocious Haysel

It is the April of a late spring ; yet preliminary prepara- tions are being made for haymaking. This precocious hayscl is of course of the new fashion, and is becoming popular with the orchard keeper, though it was invented for the use of the feeder of stock or dairy cattle. Very long grass is undesirable under fruit trees, and continuous grazing of sheep is bad for the sheep. The land grows foul. So the grass is cut early and often and at once dried and baled. The original idea was that the younger the grass the higher the nutritive value ; you could cut and come again if nitrogen fertilisers were used. The orchard is cut for other reasons than the mere value of the fodder ; but particular experiments made recently go to show that the bales of green new hay are pretty well as good for fattening stock as " cake " and concentrates. The artificial driers may prove self-supporting though the capital cost is high and a good deal of hand-labour needed for the operation, which is continuous for several months. This sort of cake can be cut and had again.

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An Evicted Colony

While the excellent tree-planting committee are decorating the countryside with trees in groups, in lines and avenues and singly, some dreadful examples of tree destruction have to be lamented. At the edges of several villages the developers, so-called, begin their heinous work of ribboning by destroying all large trees though many, if left, would make their nasty little " buglows " much more lettable. The most lamentable example is on a larger scale and for a different purpose. The last trunks are now being hauled away from a Norfolk grove that was just now one of the best heronries in the country. Pleas from all the preservers—the National Trust, the C.P.R.E., the Norfolk Naturalists' Trust—all failed. The swan song of the heronry is sung in the admirable little paper published quarterly by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, by Miss Richenda Bland, a fond and admirable observer and sanctuary specialist. I write this lament for the Islington heronry not for the sake of lamentation but to further a query about the herons. Will they move away in mass and set up a new colony, or will they disperse themselves among other colonies, which are few? Information on the subject is desired; and with a bird so visible and so fond of building a visible nest, the migration of the evicted birds should not be diffizult to