en nest;
And you all shout "Wasp!" and flick at the fellow,
And you miss his black and you miss his yellow,
And only succeed in turning over
Your glass of drink on the thirsty clover.
A picnic? Pooh! Why, you merely waste it
When there isn't a wasp to come and taste it.

However, a picnic's got to be,
Though they haven't referred the thing to me.
There's a boat and we put our parcels in it,
And off we push in another minute.
And our pace is certainly rather slow,
For everybody wants to row;
And there's any amount of laugh and chatter,
And crabs are caught, but it doesn't matter;
For we're all afloat
In an open boat,
And the breeze is light and the sky is blue,
And the sun is toasting us through and through.

By a buttercup field we came to land
And every passenger lent a hand
To unload our food and spread it out,
While the cows stood flapping their tails about.
And Peggy as waitress played her part,
And John fell into the gooseberry tart.
I can't explain, though I wish I could,
Why everything tasted twice as good?
As it does at home in the cheerful gloom
Of the old familiar dining-room.
Every picnicky thing was there,
Including the girls and the son and heir,
A red-cheeked frivolous knife-and-fork's crew,
Who hadn't forgotten, oh joy, the corkscrew!
And, last, we furbished our feasting-green,
And left no paper to spoil the scene,
Did up the remains in a tidy pack
And took to our boat and drifted back.

R. C. L.

* * * * *

THE CORNCRAKE.

The corncrake has arrived. As I turned in at the gate last night he
reported himself in the usual way. So now we are in for it. The
priceless boon of silence in the hours of darkness will be denied to us
for many weeks to come.

I do not know how to describe his utterance. It could not without
extravagance be called a note, still less a chirp, and least of all a
song. It is not a bark--not quite. It is hardly a growl or a grunt or a
snort; I should be sorry to call it a bray or a yelp. And yet I am not
going to admit that it is a quack or a bleat; and it isn't a screech or
a squeal or a sob. Nor is it a croak, though now we are getting nearer
to it. The puzzling thing about it is that it was clearly meant by
Nature to be an interjection. Uttered once, suddenly, from the far side
of a hedge it would admirably convey such a sentiment as, "Hi!" "What
ho