cocks; but if this is so, why is it that the young birds in their first plumage should be adorned with scarlet caps ? Indeed, the young are far brighter, smarter and betterlooking than the adults, affording us an example of juvenile plumage which appears to be purely decorative. At any rate, we cannot imagine such colouring helps the young bird to blend with its surroundings or is in any way protective, so protective resemblance" being ruled out of court, we must try some other theory. If the young bird was an unpalatable morsel, or had any means of defence, we might consider it showed warning coloration, but this is certainly untenable. Possibly the scarlet cap may be useful as a recognition mark," but the old birds surely do not need any scarlet head-dress to show them where their noisy, incessantly calling youngsters are? They call and call until the parent woodpeckers must be worried out of their lives. I am writing, of course, of that short period when the young, having left the nesting hole, are still dependent on the old birds for food. This phase passes quickly, and within a week or ten days the young birds are on their own" and looking after themselves. To go back for a moment to their behaviour while still in the nest, it is curious how noisy they become as the time approaches to leave. Their combined clamour has a buzzing effect. They make "quite a charm," quite a charm," as an old countryman described it. I can only say that it sounds as if some hissing snakes had got mixed up with a swarm of bees! One can hear the hubbub some way off; for instance, a nestful high up in a tall tree attracted my attention when more than fifty yards away. I should never have known of these young woodpeckers if they had kept quiet, but their incessant "buzzing "took all the woodland world into the secret of the whereabouts of their nest.

Once the young Greater Spotted Woodpeckers have left the nest hole, never to return, their cries closely resemble those of the old birds, just "Chigh! chigh!" repeated at intervals. For some days before they embark on their voyage of exploration, they keep popping up to the mouth of the hole to look out at the woodland pageant, at the sea of green leaves and swaying boughs, through which flit thrushes and blackbirds, jays and magpies, and the hundred and one creatures that make up the wild world of the trees. Yet even so early these youngsters know something of fear, of the dangers of life, and that man is the greatest danger of all, so that if they chance to catch sight of the observer the little red heads vanish from the entrance, the owners

discreetly slipping backwards down the hole to wait out of sight until the coast is clear. Even if they do not themselves see what the danger is, they are quick to take a hint from the old birds: just one sharp note of warning, and down the youngsters go to the bottom of the hole, only to pop up again like Jack-in-the-boxes when all is safe and thrust out their heads once more, raising that eager clamour for food, and yet more food, that keeps the poor parents hard at work all day searching the trees for insects, ripping open the rotten boughs and probing all sorts of holes and corners to find grubs with which to try to satisfy the insatiable youngsters.

Once the young birds have reached the stage of looking out on the world, they are not long in reaching the last and final stage of their life in the nest, and that is when they hesitate at the mouth of the hole and consider the question of leaving it for good. The biggest and strongest go first, but at the most only a few hours separate their different starts in life. They are launched into the world equipped with a considerable store of inherited knowledge : they are experts at once in the art of tree climbing; need but little experience to fly as well as their parents; their instinct will tell them how to peck and bore to find the timber-dwelling insects, but all the same, like all living creatures (with the lowest exceptions), they will profit and learn by experience. And on their ability to do so to a large extent will depend whether they live to mate and in their turn bore out a nesting hole and rear a hungry, noisy family.

That the species has much increased of late years in certain districts I have already mentioned, and it is certainly to be hoped that it will continue to do so, and that it will spread to those parts where it is yet uncommon, for it adds much to the interest and beauty of our woodlands, where it does much good and no harm. It destroys many injurious insects, but as far as harm to timber is concerned, I have never seen a Greater Spotted Woodpecker's hole bored in a sound tree.

FRANCES PITT

VOL. LXXVII

16

PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES

[In the February number of the National Review, Lady Hope discussed those "Altered Circumstances " with which many families once reputed rich are now struggling, making several helpful suggestions. The following pages are a comment on the same subject from the standpoint of the younger generation. Post-war Debutante" is believed to accurately reflect the views of her contemporaries, who feel strongly on some of these questions without many opportunities of expressing themselves.]

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THOSE of us who have grown up and "come out since the war know little or nothing of the social conditions that prevailed before the war, when things seem to have been very different from what they are now. I and my contemporaries who have to adapt ourselves to the new conditions, which are the only ones we have known, are naturally interested in all the meditations, reflections and exhortations of our seniors concerning the state of things that has passed away. Lady Hope's article on "Altered Circumstances" in a recent number of the National Review discusses the question in an attractive manner, and has been much commented on by the older and younger generations who together have to face what our parents call "the economic crisis" produced by the war which the Germans insisted on having.

I have been invited by the Editor of the National Review to say something on this much discussed matter from the standpoint of my contemporaries. But first of all I would like to say a word on their behalf, as there is an inclination in some quarters-though, happily, there is no trace of this East wind in Lady Hope's article-to criticize us as having fallen away from the superior standards set by our elders. It is suggested in thoughtless newspapers that "postwar manners are altogether inferior to" pre-war manners." This unhappy development is attributed to the much greater liberty acquired by many girls, who undertook war work of one kind or another, which took them away from home and, to some extent, affected the relations of mothers and daughters by emancipating the latter from the former. It is said that as a consequence the children have become much more independent-not to say rude-than they were; that chaperons, aunts and others in authority have rather a bad time because, generally, the girls of the present day -the post-war girls-are "a bit above themselves."

Everybody judges men, women, flappers and children

by those that they happen to know, and it strikes me that "Paterfamilias" or an Aggrieved Parent" who pour out their grievances in a sympathetic Press must be somewhat unlucky in their belongings and may be partly to blame for the shortcomings of which they complain. I can't speak of how people behaved to one another in 1914, as I only began going about in 1919; but looking round a somewhat varied acquaintance, I see no signs anywhere of any disposition on the part of daughters to bully their mothers. I may, of course, be told that I generalize from my own circumstances, and necessarily we are all affected by the atmosphere in which we live; but there is no reason that my impression should be more inaccurate than that of the critics who dogmatize on at least as little experience, and who may be among those confirmed pessimists who in every age are wont to declare "the country is going to the dogs" and that "the young people are not what they were in my days, when a father's word was law and no mother was ever contradicted."

If we of the new generation were as black as we are occasionally painted by the Jeremiahs, it would not, after all, be so much our fault as theirs. People who criticize children seem to forget they are criticizing themselves. After all, we are what our parents have made us, and they alone are to blame if there is anything wrong with us. They have complete control of our destinies from the day we are born until the day we finally leave the schoolroom for our first dance. They choose our nurses as well as the entire household, whether it be large or small. They select our governesses-an all-important matter to us, on which we are never consulted-they decide what we shall learn or not learn, and frequently without any regard to our tastes and aptitudes. Thus, we may be hopelessly unmusical, nevertheless we are made to strum the piano year after year without ever extracting one pleasant sound from it; and though no music mistress can be cajoled into suggesting that one's playing could ever be anything but a pain to one's friends, we go on grinding away. So with all other subjects. The parents may be thoroughly uneducated--as, indeed, are many of my acquaintance: they scarcely know the names, still less the dates, of the Kings of England. They have never heard of the mouths of the Nile, and are equally innocent as to the order of American Presidents or the list of the Popes. Nevertheless, the children belonging to the class described by Lady Hope in her article are expected to spend months and years of their lives in

learning these and even more useless things, of which they will never hear again until they have children of their own and the whole dismal business recommences.

I am not attacking modern education, not feeling qualified to do so. There may be excellent reasons for all the time devoted to all the subjects that make up what is called "the curriculum "--which are rarely mastered, and of which one hardly acquires more than a smattering. It may be good discipline, it may be intellectual gymnastics, it may build up the character of those who go through the treadmill. It may do many other things that eloquent people talk about at Educational Congresses and other places where platitude abounds. But as I look round my friends, acquaintances and rather numerous relations, I am amazed at the small results achieved by the prolonged governessing" which they have had. The process usually begins at the age of eight and lasts until eighteen. must be a great deal to be said for the system that is unknown to me. Its inconveniences are obvious. Its costs are enormous. Suspicious people even say that it let loose a flood of German spies in political families before the war, wherever information useful to "the Fatherland" might be picked up. There may be compensation for all this of which one knows nothing.

There

The present system of managing families was not invented by the children, and if there is anything wrong about it, if its results are disappointing, if it has produced a generation of ill-mannered flappers," the parents are entirely responsible because they are autocrats in all home matters -they invented and imported the German governess. What impresses me among my contemporaries who are supposed to have had the best education that could be provided by singing masters, music mistresses, drawing masters, by foreign tutors or governesses, is the fact that hardly one of them can sing a song, play an accompaniment, or, indeed, any instrument, paint a picture or speak one foreign language in a manner intelligible to the native. What has happened to the ten years of sustained, devoted, intelligent effort by highly qualified instructors of both sexes ? I cannot say, but the results are roughly as I describe them. My friends are anything but stupid. On the contrary, they are very intelligent and keenly interested in many subjects, but judged by practical tests they know very little of those in which they are supposed to have been grounded. It therefore requires unusual faith to believe that in the class with which Lady Hope's article is concerned