COUNTRY LIFE
Zero Hour
Our forbears have told us how on Christmas Eve, 1860, the thermometer fell to zero and the river Ouse bore on Christmas morning. The experience has not been repeated since, though a generation later an ox was roasted on the Thames in the New Year. Of English winter sports the headquarters is not a height but a plain, some feet below sea level. Lingay Fen has been the scene of many skating championships, and many a half-frozen crowd has watched the red sunset behind the pollard willows near its edge. Ice, corn and sunsets are the special glory of the Fens ; and it is worth any skater's while to launch himself into the network of great dykes and skate till the light fails. Whenever I have done it I have chosen as doorway to the freedom of the Fens a small dyke within a few yards of Holme station on the G.N.R. just south of Peterborough. The best dykes extend eastwards of that railway, and disclose to you a western Holland of the highest charm. If in the evening you can find a copy of Dugdale's History of the Fens the interest of the land and water you have seen will be doubled. Some of the best passages that he quotes refer to the quantity of wild life that once flourished there and provided the inhabitants (who were experts at the snare) with food in plenty. The wild life at one time included the wolf.
A South African Model Christmas cards come earlier and earlier, no doubt out of an increasing regard for the Post Office. The most original that I have yet received comes from South Africa ; and it might give a hint to South Kensington. It consists of a case just set up in the Museum at Cape Town. Most persuasive foliage has been artistically compounded out of wax and other substances, and in a landscape of many features are grouped some of the most characteristic birds of the Cape, a district where birds are very numerous and more than usually easy to observe. To give one illustration, a young Engilsh visitor to the Cape marked down 240 species well within his first year of residence. The crown of the case in the museum is a bower bird at work on its nest. An admirable and cheap illustrated book on the birds of South Africa has been written by Mr. Gill, head of the museum, and illustrated very faithfully by his sister.
A Pergola Nursery
In a recent gale a rose pergola was blown down and the rettenness of some of the posts disclosed. As one of them was being sawn up a circular tunnel was disclosed filled up com- pletely with circular cells making a singularly perfect fit. They were the work of that most admirable of artists, the leaf-cutting bee. Each cell was capped in the usual way with a wad made by several layers of circular cuttings from rose- leaves and the tube itself with many compacted oval pieces of the same leaf. The wax cells of the hive bee are more mathe- matically perfect ; but the art of this single bee is more wonderful perhaps than the science of the gregarious bee. In one garden where I watched them at work on several occasions they rather preferred the laburnum leaf to the rose-leaf. The rolling up began immediately the cutting was over and the bee flying off on the curled leaf suggested a witch on her broom-pole. Several species of the same family use ready-made crevices (from a keyhole to a snail shell) but the leaf-cutter usually does a good deal of the tunnelling with its own proper jaws, though only through rotting wood and, I fancy, seeks signs of an existing tunnel. In the nest in the broken pergola pole the eggs had hatched, and there was still a fair supply of pollen left for the sustenance of the grub. It seems to me that this member of the family (megachile) grows more common —perhaps because we grow more roses.
Animal Senses Not long since on the Downs near the Berkshire-Gloucester- shire boundary several groups of sheep suddenly bolted ; on one farm at any rate they broke down the hurdles in which they were penned. In the admirably edited Gloucester- shire County Magazine a brief account of this curious event is given, and some parallel cases quoted. These parallels are interesting, but I doubt an inference drawn, that birds have intensely sensitive ears. Their master sense is certainly
sight ; and it is, I think, well established that it directs vultures to their prey from enormous distances. Birds can be aston- ishingly insensitive to sound. You may shoot several pistol shots at a tree partridge of the Canadian type from a few yards off and not disturb the bird if your aim is bad ; and once in my youth I saw a number of rifle shots from about twenty yards fired at an English partridge scratching in a heap of leaves. True examples are quoted of the restlessness of pheasants both before thunder approaches and perhaps when distant cannons are in action ; but it may be that, like a piano- tuner, they are aware of vibration rather than note. It is altogether surprising how little attention birds pay to aeroplanes or other loud noises that are at a certain distance. Sheep, which are not very clever animals, and are not endowed with very acute senses (except perhaps that of smell) have an utterly surprising perception of time. They know the feeding hour to a minute or two.
Stupid Animals One of the greatest authorities on wild animals denied intelligence to the horse, which is cited in the discussion on animal sensitiveness. An example is given in Farnz2rs' Creed of a horse that bolted on the stimulus of vibration from an accident in a railway tunnel two miles away ; and certainly horses hear well. They have also particular gifts of perception. There is no doubt at all that some of them are aware of the arrival of a hunting morning. They can also accumulate knowledge of memory, as for example of the way to open a latch. Perhaps they have generally been thought stupider than they are because of their extreme nervousness. Fear usually destroys intelligence for the time being ; and a frightened horse perceives nothing but his own fears. How different is a fox or a rat in this !
Useless Councils
Parish Councils are acquiring the reputation of undue carelessness on the question of preserving footpaths, A good many have been closed of late, some with the too easy concurrence of the council or one of its members. The Parish Council is not a rich or powerful body, but it has complete authority with regard to footpaths, and all such councils should make a complete census of parochial foot- paths and jealously guard them. A quaint if unimportant point has arisen in regard to one path. The landowner, acknowledging the right of way, has in one place made a sort of cutting for the path, so that the users may not be visible from his garden. Some sticklers maintain that it is as illegiti- mate to move a path in the vertical as in the horizontal plane. Some landowners have been good enough to label the paths through their property and so save the council a trouble and expense that they are often too lazy or mean to undertake.
In the Garden It is a marvel that plants manage to survive a hard frost, especially when they have been tempted, as this year, to postpone hibernation. It is always the latest growths that suffer most. Some trees and bushes, mulberry and rims cotinus for example, get the reputation of being slow growers solely because the young shoots are cut back by frost. The mulberry if protected is a quick grower ; and more than this, will strike readily from cuttings of a very large size. Jasmine, which is a late and quick grower, often loses all its top shoots. I know one garden, belonging to an owner of Dutch connexion, where most of the hedges are wrapped in straw during the winter. Many of them are of that beautiful, quick-growing but rather treacherous conifer Macrocarpa, which is as tender as Thuja Lobbii or Thuja occidentalis (a better hedge plant) is robust. How to protect is a difficult matter. Yew boughs are as good as anything for covering underground weaklings ; and it is a happy thing that even a net will do a good deal tà keep off excess of frost. If the wind is right a good smoky garden bonfire will achieve something on the principle of the " smudges " now being more freely used for protecting fruit trees from May frosts. One fruit gardener of my acquaint- ance kept by his bedside an alarum clock set in action by a ther- mometer. When it registered frost, the alarum sounded and the gardener went forth to light his smudges.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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