SELBORNIANA 
203 
It may, perhaps, be possible to make an appeal to the farmer 
— which may be the more effective as being addressed to his 
pocket — to the effect that galvanised iron is not a very durable 
substance unless painted, so that, apart from our merely “ senti- 
mental ” aesthetic arguments, a coat of a dull red or dark green 
paint to his buildings, or even of tar, will probably prove to his 
own decided advantage. We would take this opportunity of 
once more urging upon our Members that they should use all 
their influence upon parish and district councils to prevent the 
needless destruction of our hedge-banks and the grass edgings 
to country paths under the plea of road-improvement. The 
unnecessary introduction of stone kerbs and the yet more inde- 
fensible plastering of the banks with the mud cleared out of the 
ditches is rapidly exterminating the wild flowers of our lanes. 
Practical Rural Botany. — Our Member, Mr. George 
Stanton, of Park Place, Henley-on-Thames, was recently 
awarded a silver medal by the Reading Horticultural Society 
for a useful exhibition of named specimens of wild flowers and 
fruits, including especially the dangerously poisonous species, 
such as Airopa Belladonna , Arum maculatum, Solanum nigrum, and 
the perhaps less certainly dangerous Solanum Dulcamara. Such 
series at rural flower-shows may be most instructive, without 
involving any extermination of rarities. 
Pollution of Windermere. — In July last the attention of 
the Council was directed by Mr. Henry W. Stock, of Petersham, 
Surrey, to the serious pollution of Windermere by the casting of 
the furnace-ashes of the pleasure steamers into the lake. The 
Council addressed a complaint on the subject to the Windermere 
Urban District Council, and have now been informed in reply 
that that body has called upon the owners of the steamers to 
stop this nuisance. 
A Plea for the Otter. — In Fores' Sporting Notes and 
Sketches Mr. M. B. Durham advocates the preservation of the 
otter. “ Out of the teeming millions of coarse fish that will be 
found in such rivers as the Thames,” he says, “ can it for a 
moment be believed that the damage wrought by one or even 
half a dozen otters in, say, twenty miles of water would make 
any appreciable difference at all to the sport of the angler ? To 
my mind the suggestion is ridiculous. What is thought of a 
man who in such a stream as I have mentioned kills a king- 
fisher? And, indeed, is not that gaily-plumaged frequenter of 
our rivers and streams very properly protected by law ? Yet let 
one of our field naturalists who has watched these birds fishing 
tell us which of the two — an otter or a kingfisher — does most 
damage to a stream. I believe the naturalist’s verdict would be 
the kingfisher. . . . But I do not think it just or reasonable, 
where both creatures have a great attraction for a lover of 
