to catch the pollen from the lamb's-tail catkins hanging in tassels above. There is a hazel in the corner of my garden outside the study, and I make a daily pilgrimage thereto in the hope of seeing those little stars of promise. They came early in January this year. So did the aconites, periwinkles and snowdrops; so did the yellow crocuses-very early indeed ; they were fully open in the bleak sunshine of one day in late January, a record for these parts. And in the second week in February our first daffodil was fully out in a sheltered spot in the garden. Once upon a time, when I lived in a town, in my youth― Could not some philanthropist so arrange matters that every town boy and girl should spend at least one whole year in the country, amongst sympathetic folk inspired by some knowledge of nature, to see all the changes of the seasons? The "nature study creeping into our scheme of national education for the youth of cities is a step in the right direction, but a poor substitute for the real thing. To get back to my once upon а time" I used to imagine that there was no colour in a winter landscape, except brown. Trees, fields, hedges and roads, all seemed to me to be brown in winter during the fleeting : 66 glimpses I had of them, until the time when the marsh-marigolds began to blaze at me in the water-meadows. Now-but I must begin to-day, the turn of the year, from the beginning. There was something indescribable in the air that came into open bedroom windows early this morning. Something that made me want to be out of bed and out of doors. Very different from the usual winter-morning feeling of resentment at having to leave a warm bed, and of envy of dormice and such-like folk who are credited with spending their whole winter in warm sleep. The feeling was forgotten with the beginning of the morning's task in the study. Newspapers to be studied, to keep abreast with public affairs for the sake of an article thereon, for which an Editor is clamouring. Letters to be read and answered; accounts, bills, and so on. Then a settling down to the day's work, the article itself. The writing-table in the little study faces away from the morning sun, and I work contentedly for a time, when-enter Herself, from the garden, by the French window facing east. The sunshine enters, too, no longer cold winter sunshine, but life-reviving sunshine. Why don't you leave that, and spend the day up the valley?" The Editor's visage fades from my remembrance. He is human; he would drop his blue pencil, even as I drop my pen, if the poor fellow could only see the sun over the chimneypots as I see it over the trees. There is something different, some new life in the air; it smells of new life. The turn of the year has come, and "indoors" is stuffy and impossible. I must see that valley again. No colour in the winter months? When I get to the valley I find the elm-trees spangled with scarlet specks in the sunshine (in my youth I never knew that elms had red flowers!) and the beech woods and birches a soft purple, the withy-beds blazing orange and red. Almond-blossom is out in a cottage garden. In one sheltered and sunny spot a pear-tree is just showing signs of flowers: no pears from that tree! There are bad times ahead, bitter east winds, probably, and snow and sleet, before the real spring comes. But the turn of the year has come, and that means that the sun will gain daily in strength. As in the late war, creative power will get stronger after every onslaught of hate and destruction, and the sunshine will grow constantly warmer until 'Break-a-pipe day." That is the name by which we call the day described by Edward 66 Fitzgerald above. Then, equipped for flyfishing, we'll go off to his "Meadows in Spring to meet the swallows. For the present we will keep to the road; the water-meadows look cold and uninviting. But the turn of the year has really come. The soft silver-grey 66 pussy-cat" catkins are showing already, the "palms " of the country folk; soon they will be yellow, powdered with golden pollen. Then the marsh-marigolds will bloom again in the water-meadows. These words may be read on a bitter day, with cold winds and driving snow or sleet. But the sun will win. The turn of the year has passed. I II FEBRUARY FILL-DYKE WONDER whether there is a close-time for pike, and what the penalty is for disregarding it. I suppose that as a fisherman I ought to know, but there might just as well be a close-time for rats in a wheat-stack as for pike in a trout-stream. For all I know they may be out of season in February, so perhaps I had better not mention the name of the river referred to in these notes of a February day, lest I be pursued by those whose business it is to deal with breakers of the law. In such matters the activities of upholders of the law are confined to their own fishery districts. It is not their business to pursue malefactors beyond those limits. The main point is that the pike must be got rid of by every imaginable device, and they seem to take better in these parts in February and March than at any other time of the year. Spinning for pike in fast-running water is great |