9.
fissured into clints and grykes large enough to swallow
up any number of golf-balls. Village ponds which were
full to overflowing in May are now little more than
dustbowls and it takes all our efforts to keep the
azaleas and rhododendrons and other choice plants alive
and to secure a reasonable crop of the fresh vegetables
we have worked so hard to get.
What a year this has been! It seems incredible that in
early January we could have picked in our garden at leas
36 kinds of flowers, certainly more than we can now;
pansies were a mound of colour and even exotics such as
Cistus corbariensis could muster the odd flower or two.
Hedgebanks and verges, green with new growth despite the
season, were often coloured with wild flowers;
magnificent patches of Winter Heliotrope which had
escaped the confines of nearby gardens, and of course
the common daisy, and dotted here and there a few pre-
cocious plants of Hogweed and Cow-parsley unsuspectedly
coaxed into full bloom by the unseasonal warmth, and
several grasses already in flower five months before
their time. It would have been interesting to record
those plants which were responsive to warmth rather than
day-length; I wonder if anyone did.
J. L. Fielding
Decticus albifrons
It was on my desk when I returned from lunch one after-
noon in early August. Now I frequently find things on
my desk, or less conveniently on my chair. Seldom do
these things bear any label and often their origin pose
a problem, but in the end most of them prove to come via
the college zoology lab. just along the corridor. One
day it was a squirrel that had been found in the grounds
at other times there have been shrews and the odd vole.
Once there was a large dusty birds nest, for I had let
it be known that I was looking for fleas for the
National Flea Survey!
Now there is one common feature to all of these, they
were all dead. Except for the fleas, but they had