Three Of Them Would Wear Out Their
Mother Completely, Especially If - As May Possibly Be The Case - The Male
Cuckoo Will Not Help In Feeding.
This is the simplest explanation, I
think; yet, as I have often said before, we must not always judge the
ways of birds or animals or insects either by strict utility, or by
crediting them with semi-supernatural intelligence.
They have their
fancies, likes and dislikes, and caprices. There are circumstances - perhaps
far back in the life-history of their race - of which we know nothing, but
which may influence their conduct unconsciously still, just as the
crusades have transmitted a mark to our minds to-day. Even though an
explanation may satisfy us, it is by no means certain that it is the true
one, for they may look at matters in an entirely different manner from
what we do. The effect of the cuckoo's course is to cause an immense
destruction of insects, and it is really one of the most valuable as well
as the most welcome of all our birds.
The thin pipe of the gnat heard at night is often alluded to, half in
jest, by our older novelists. It is now, I think, dying out a good deal,
and local where it stays. It occurred to me, on seeing some such allusion
the other day, that it was six years since I had heard a gnat in a
bedroom - never since we left a neighbourhood where there had once been
marshy ground. Gnats are, however, less common generally - exclusive, of
course, of those places where there is much water. All things are local,
insects particularly so. On clay soils the flies in summer are most
trying; black flies swarm on the eyes and lips, and in the deep lanes
cannot be kept off without a green bough. It requires the utmost patience
to stay there to observe anything. In a place where the soil was sand,
with much heath, on elevated ground, there was no annoyance from flies.
There were crowds of them, but they did not attack human beings. You
might sit on a bank in the fields with endless insects passing without
being irritated; but everywhere out of doors you must listen for the
peculiar low whir of the stoat-fly, who will fill his long grey body with
your blood in a very few minutes. This is the tsetse of our woods.
STEAM ON COUNTRY ROADS.
Losses year after year and increasing competition indicate that the crops
now grown are not sufficient to support the farmer. When he endeavours,
however, to vary his method of culture, and to introduce something new,
he is met at the outset by two great difficulties which crush out the
possibility of enterprise. The first of these - the extraordinary
tithe - has already come into prominent notice; the second is really even
more important - it is the deficiency of transit. An extensive use of
steam on common roads appears essential to a revival of agricultural
prosperity, because without it it is almost impossible for delicate and
perishable produce to be quickly and cheaply brought to market. Railways,
indeed, now connect nearly every town of any size whatever throughout the
country with the large cities or London; but railways are necessarily
built as lines of communication between towns, and not in reference to
scattered farms. Upon the map the spaces between the various rails do not
look very broad, but those white bands when actually examined would be
found to be six, eight, ten, or even twenty miles wide. Nor are there
stations everywhere, so that a farm which may be only six miles from the
metals may be ten from the nearest platform. Goods trains do not, as in
the United States, stop to pick up wherever there is material or produce
waiting to be loaded; the produce has to be taken where the railway
chooses, and not where it would suit the farmer's convenience. When at
last the farmer's waggon reaches the station he finds no particular
trouble taken to meet his needs; his horse and carters are kept hours and
hours, perhaps far into the night, for a mere matter of a ton or two, nor
is there any special anxiety shown to deliver his consignment early,
though if it should not be moved from the companies' premises demurrage
is charged. In short, the railway companies, knowing that the
agriculturists until the formation of the 'Farmers' Alliance' were
incapable of united action, have used them much as they liked. As for the
rates charged, the evidence recently taken, and which is to be continued,
shows that they are arbitrary and often excessive. The accommodation is
poor in the extreme, the charges high, the speed low, and every condition
against the farmer. This, in its turn, drives the farmer more into the
hands of the middleman. The latter makes a study of the rail and its
awkward ways, and manages to get the goods through, of course adding to
their cost when they reach the public. Without the dealer, under present
circumstances, the farmer would often find it practically impossible to
get to markets not in his immediate neighbourhood. The rail and its
awkward, inconvenient ways actually shut him off. In manufacturing
districts the transit of iron and minerals and worked-up metal is managed
with considerable ability. There are appointed to manage the goods
traffic men who are alert to the conditions of modern requirements and
quick to meet them. In agricultural districts the question often arises
if there be really any responsible local goods managers at all. It seems
to be left to men who are little more than labourers, and who cannot
understand the patent fact that times are different now from what they
were thirty years since, when they first donned their uniforms. The
railways may bring their books and any number of their officers to prove
that everything is perfectly satisfactory, but the feeling remains,
nevertheless, that it is exactly the contrary.
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