Countrymen often display a dry humour all their own. At a shooting party we fell in with a beater, into whose charge one of the guns had given a well-filled cartridge-bag. Every now and again we noticed that the beater thrust his hand into the bag, and regarded the cartridges which he pulled out with a puzzled look. We inquired the reason, and it transpired that some of the cartridges were loaded with No. 5 shot, and some with No. 5-1/2, and that the beater had been asked to sort them by their owner, a gun of indifferent merits. He said, in continuation of his story: "He did tell I he can't get on nohow wi' sich mixed tackle. _I_ reckon if there weren't no shots in 'em at all 'twouldn't make ne'er a marsel o' difference." * * * * * The Oak City Every oak-tree teems with life. Of insects alone five hundred species look mainly to the oak for support. When the tree grows to the age of fruitfulness--when sixty or seventy years have passed over its head--then its population is increased tenfold. Here is a reason for the incredible supplies of fruit--the great majority of the acorns go to support the pensioners, and thousands must be sown if one is to have a chance to develop into a seedling. Squirrels come to feast and hide the acorns as they hide nuts; the dormice come; human children come with sacks for the sake of the pigs at home; pheasants feast on the ground; rooks, more wary, amid the branches; hungry jays warn hungry wood-pigeons when the keeper approaches. To the animals, birds, and insects are added the parasite plants, fungi flourishing where a broken branch rots, lichens covering the bark, on the topmost bough the mistletoe. * * * * * Acorns Were it not for the oaks there would be scanty winter faring and feasting for many wild creatures. When acorns and hazel-nuts are scarce, and full beech-masts are not plentiful, birds and beasts have an unusually hard struggle to tide over the winter, even should it be mild, as a paucity of nuts is supposed to foretell. Different creatures like their nut food in different conditions and at different times. The rooks in their greed pull the acorns from their cups where they grow, others do not relish them in their fresh green state, and wait until they are ripe and mellow. Pheasants, who are very partial to acorns in autumn and winter, when more delicate faring is not available, prefer to eat them just as they begin to sprout. Like corn and other seeds, acorns when sprouting possess a peculiarly attractive sweetness. Some of the trees seem to produce fruit of extra sweetness or extra fine flavour--at least, the gamekeeper finds that his pheasants seem to prefer to feed beneath certain trees. Perhaps it is that those trees which are most sun-drenched produce the sweetest acorns, just as the most exposed hazel-nuts on the topmost twigs are so much better than the pale ones of the lowest branches.