The Henson Journals

[136]

Friday, August 27th, 1926.

I spent the whole morning in clearing up divers businesses by way of leaving a clean slate. Then, after lunch, I motored to Darlington, and joined J. G. Wilson, with whom I had tea, & then travelled to Sedgwick House near Kendal. Our train was half an hour after time so that we did not begin dinner before 9 p.m. Our host, Mr Wakefield, is a landed proprietor who was educated at Oxford, & is evidently a man of intelligence & public spirit. Wilson did at one time coach him, and he seems to have come to Durham in order to prepare for Smalls at Oxford. Our conversation dealt mainly with agricultural matters, & subjects connected with the country. He did not think that the destruction of the hedge–rows in order to widen the roads had done any real harm to bird–life, so great was the capacity of self–adaptation to circumstances which birds possessed. Plovers were, he thought, increasing again, though the first results of prohibiting the taking of their eggs had been disappointing. He had come to think that the painful & expensive method of slaughtering diseased animals was the best method of combating foot–and–mouth disease. It was formerly supposed that the disease was brought by the Irish cattle, but this view was now generally abandoned. Our host's son came in when dinner was nearly finished. He had shot 132 grouse on an adjoining moor (i.e. the shooting party of which he formed a member had shot the birds), and said that he had never seen so many young birds. On the other hand, Wilson mentioned the case of a Northumbrian grouse moor on which out of forty birds shot, there was not a single young bird.

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