Show if 0 I 1 U CLIMATE crop control ono result of the severest winter known in the east since valley forge Is that the ground has frozen to unprecedented depths in some parts of new england following a season of the most abundant rain tor for several deais with the soil well moistened the frost line has gone as deep as six feet in my own berkshire county we had two years of severe drouth which lowered the water table ten tea to luteen fifteen feet then we had two years of rains and open winters this spring the melting of the heaviest snowfall in a century has flooded all the valleys washed out bridges and inundated low parts of many towns my guess Is that it will be mid june before my river meadows are dry enouch to till and at least that late before the chill gets out of the upland soil it wont take drastic action on the part of the federal government to reduce agricultural production in new england this year rusts few sunned sun lied this ought to be a good year for tree fruits in the east agricultural biologists tell us that the san jose scale the codling moth and other tree posts pests whose larvae bi hibernate bernate in the ground has been pretty well killed off by the extraordinary penetrating cold weather squirrels and field mice like all tile the other warm blooded wild animals will bo be comparatively scarce next summer I 1 hear leports of many deer having been frozen or star starved v ed to death in the around my farm and there Is some reason to believe that the frost got deep enough into the ground to kill off a good many woodchucks though they are pretty tough critters to get rid of I 1 look for more than the usual volume of raid on chicken houses by red foxes this season for those animals usually survive any sort of winter while the s smaller m slier creatures which are their natural nat t food succumb euc cumb I 1 FINGER BOWLS in in england I 1 until edward VII father ot of the present king of england ascended the throne in 1901 there had been no finger bowls on the royal table for two hundred years that was because many of the english nobility believed that all the kings and queens of england since james I 1 II if were usurpers usurp ers and that the rightful rightfully right full king icing was one of the house of stuart in exile on the continent so when the toast to the king was drunk they would hold their wine glasses over the finger bowls and thus drink to the king over the water there are no lineal descendants of 0 james now living but the memory of the Jacob jacobitz rebellion so called because jacobus Is the latin word for jam james c s Is kept alive by a decet society known 0 n as the order of the white rose pose P ose which has branches in the united states as well as canada england and scotland so one of my friends who belongs to it told me the other day its nonsense of course he said but no more than many other secret orders whose important function after all Is to get men together in goodfellow ship SH and bacon I 1 was invited the other night to a dinner f the bacon society of america it has nothing to do with consumption of c the oversupply over supply of 0 pork products but Is composed cf enthusiasts who are arc convinced that the plays and poems attributed to william shakespeare were leally written by sir francis bacon they base that not only upon the purported discovery or of a secret cipher in the first polio folio edition of shakespeare but upon the assumption that only a highly educated man of preat pleat erudition could have kno n a rii ich h as the tha author of these works whereas Z shakespeare was an unlettered countryman I 1 ned ed sor orie e rt of the Bacon ians whether they ii diac liac 0 ever heard cf c such a thing as genii gealta wl they could name the college where robert burns was educated or tell where mark alark twain got his diploma they like that so I 1 went away admy and left them to their innocent amu amusement bement his place all doubt as to whether col lindbergh Und bergh Is still the great popular hero of the american people was dispelled when his appearance before the senate committee investigating the air mail drew the largest 1 crowd that has ever attended such a gathering the eagerness with which tolk folk listened over the radio to his testimony and the applause which greeted I 1 him everywhere in washington the columns which the newspapers planted about him and what lie he said and the universal approval of his modest yet well statements have I 1 believe increased his popularity it if that were nere possible I 1 arter after all the underlying common sanse of 0 the american peoria people has always discriminated between the mere notoriety seeker aho vho a ho Is always talking about something usually himself and the man mail of character and achievement who keeps his mouth shut when he has nothing important to say |