i68 JULY 



are fifty or sixty eating their fill daily in the corner of one 

 uncut hayfield. Last year, in August, a host of turtle 

 doves descended on a neighbouring and ill-farmed corn 

 field. The farmer, out of curiosity and fear for his grain, 

 shot one. Its crop was distended with nothing but the 

 seeds of that pernicious weed, the charlock, or wild 

 mustard. Well, let us confess since there is no doubt 

 about it that the pigeon tribe cultivates an insatiable 

 greed and may do much damage ; but let us also put 

 down the buttercups and charlock to their credit. And 

 how beautiful they are to watch ! 



It is a sign of a new prosperity in the land that farmers 

 gather eagerly to the two agricultural stations flourishing 

 within their county ; and one of these, at Rothamsted, 

 is as much international as insular. In one room a 

 group of local farmers were shown the arrangements for 

 studying the diseases of English bees and the investiga 

 tions into the unagricultural subject of the migration of 

 insects ; and one of them asked whether such insects 

 could carry diseases, foot-and-mouth for example. It is 

 doubtless possible that our most isolated hamlets may 

 be directly in touch with Europe, Africa, Asia and even 

 America. This station was at the time collecting the 

 evidence on a scarcely credible effort in migration, not by 

 birds but by butterflies, and it is worth much more 

 attention than it has received either from the imaginative 

 or the scientific observers. Though more surprising 

 than others it is one only of a bevy of similar discoveries 

 made during the last year or two by the new and enter 

 prising school of those who were once unkindly called 

 &quot; bug-hunters/ 



