OBSERVATIONS.
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OBSERVATIONS. A Pelican sat napping in front of a houseboat-door. His sleep was light and gentle : you could almost hear him snore. His head was tucked beneath his wing ; boredom was in his look : Too tired to catch the " tiddlers " that came floating dozon the brook. For hours and hours and hours he listened to the chatter Of one who in that houseboat lived, his name—eh ?—does not matter. He talked of Bird and Beast and Fish, with knozvledge comprehending ; But, to that poor tired Pelican, the talk seemed never-ending. This Human told of Plovers, pert, plump and collaretted ; Of Ruddy Sheld-ducks' nibbling, with habits much regretted ; Of Worms with tiny legs, in ooze of Breydon's slimy mud : Kipling would have called these things his idols, " Great Gawd Budd." Yet, notwithstanding such poor joke, in this prefatory rhyme I like to sing his wisdom of Bird, Fish, Beast and Clime. His weather-beaten wanderings sometimes provoke my mirth, But such as he hold me in fee and are salt of all the Earth.
GEOLOGY.—Our Haiesworth Secretary reports the discovery in Boulder-clay, while foundations of metal pylons were being <iug,'of Gryphcea incurva shells, some interesting fragments of Belemnites in his immediate vicinity, of Ammonites at Laxfield, and of Micaceous Schist at South Elmham St. James. With so puny a compensation do we have to content ourselves for the appallingly incongruous Martians that Stretch in uncompromising hideositv athwart the fair meads of broad Suffolk in too many directions. Why our particular County should have been selected by the Devil for utilitarian disfiguration, the gods alone can teil. Throughout the entire roads hence to Bournemouth one's vision is blistered by only a single line of such monstrosities, somewhere around Ascot perhaps: certainly it is sure to blot the (otherwise) most beauteous of landscapes with gaunt and blatant artificiality.—CLAUDE M O R L E Y . W A L N U T BLIGHT.—My Walnut-trees at Campsea Ashe are affected with something. It may be the new bacterial blight {Pseudomonas juglans), an organism that caused serious loss in the Walnut groves of California early in this Century, when it was also rife in New Zealand, and about fifteen years ago spread to most of the eastern states of North America ; later it extended to Chile, and in 1920 was recognized in Europe. It was found at East Mailing (Gardeners' Chronicle), and is now known in Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Worcester. At first I thought it was old age here, where the trees stand on the east front of the High House ; the two nearest the house are the worst affected. Some of the ualnuts at the Rectory here are also affected. The symptons shown are a gradual defoliation, with a good deal of dead wood amongst the smaller branches, a paucity of fruits and most of the fruits, when picked up, are rotten [characters noticed also at Monks' Soham Hall.—Ed.], I have had to feil two or three OF the group, as they looked so bad.—LORD ULLSWATER, in lit. 5 Jan. 1932.