On the Chilterns.

OUR parish is on high table-land, stretching out from the spurs of the Chilterns.

It is noted far and wide for its cherries.

Everybody in it, from the churchwardens downwards, knows something of the culture and management of cherry-trees.

The wild stocks are budded in July-generally late in the month. The process is as follows:-A man of acknowledged skill in the work goes his rounds from parish to parish. His first step is to thin the tree by sawing off some of the leafiest boughs. Then he carefully inserts his buds into incisions made in the bark of the remaining branches, binding them firmly at the point of connection with the bud with ligatures of bass. The number of insertions depends on the size of the trees operated upon. The bigger limbs will take from three to six buds, the smaller one or two each. A fair sized young tree will take from fifty to sixty buds. The trees when budded look like Irishmen, with their wounds bound with sticking plaster after a faction fight.

Towards the Easter following the insertion of the buds, the man goes his rounds again, and, in the case of any that have "taken holt," cuts off the bough some four inches above the bud.

The scale of remuneration is peculiar. You "take a penny and leave a penny "; in other words, a penny a bud is paid at the time of insertion, and another penny for such buds as, at the following Easter, prove to be alive and vigorous.

The great sight of the year in our parish is the spectacle of the cherry-trees and the gorse in bloom together on our common. Let us imagine a stranger, from some cherryless region, approaching the spot from the lowlands. His attention is caught by what, at the first glance, he fancies to be wreaths of bluish-grey vapour floating across a dark background of beech woods and fir coppices. But presently he finds that these mist-like blurs are stationary, and, as the road winds nearer, other grey cloud-like masses rise to

view. They are his first glimpses of our cherry-trees in their pride! Soon he reaches a point whence the full beauty of the scene bursts upon him.

The common is as a sea of glory, whose golden billows surge over the green velvety turf up to the very stems of the cherrytrees in the foreground; while, in the mid-distance, and at the further edge of the common, the pyramids of milk-white cherryblossom show like snowy-sailed yachts upon the yellow ocean of the gorse. Close to him is a group of cherry-trees, each of some eight feet girth, covered with bloom save where the later opening buds dash the pearly white with irregular lines of pink, merging into russet, like streaks of strawberry juice in cream. The air is full of fragrance and the dreamy "murmur of innumerable bees."

Just crossing the horizon-line and dipping into the dark hollow between the common and the woods beyond is a dense myriad-winged flock of wood-pigeons-no infrequent sight in this region of beech plantations. Against the sky they showed dark, but instantaneously change into light-brown flecked with white when they have behind them the dark curtain of the distant trees.

The lowing of far-away cattle on an upland farm blends with the musical monotone,-subtle mixture of countless sounds,-which thrills ceaselessly upon the ear, save when punctuated by the clear double note of the cuckoo, the whistle of the thrush, and the deep mellow call of the blackbird, or drowned for a moment in the sudden rush of melody from the throat of an uprising lark.

Where the line of the common's surface trends downwards into the valley, it is broken by three slim young cherry-trees, thrown into such strong relief by the dark-blue shadows beyond, that they look like sheeted ghosts of trees; while, lower still, the line is crested by a ragged edge of flame where the gorse bushes pour over it down the slope.

We will suppose our stranger to be one to whom the only aspect of cherry-tree life hitherto has been in its capacity of a wall fruit tree with its spreading arms pinned tightly against the brickwork of a garden wall.

Let him look on this picture and on that!

Why, our cherry-trees are, many of them, luxuriant foresttrees of quite respectable girth, yet bearing, owing to the thoughtful care of the forefathers of our hamlet, as delicious fruit as their prim captive sisters.

Yet, though our trees grow in untrammelled freedom on an open common, they are in reality as jealously guarded as though

they were enclosed in a ten-foot wall with a coping of broken. bottles.

The fact is, our cherry-trees, though "situate," in legal phrase, on open ground, are not common property, but are, in accordance with an ancient custom of the country-side, allotted to the different cottages on the common.

They are more than trees-they are old family friends, even known in some instances by pet names. They pay the cottager's rent, or help towards it. They are his pride and glory, nearer to him even than his cow, dearer even than his pig.

Whatever other pranks the urchins of our parish may play, climb a cherry-tree they dare not. To hurl a stone even into its sacred boughs never enters into their wildest dreams. Yea! to cut their initials on its bark-it were suicide!

True, such deeds have been done; but only by the rash hands of irreverent strangers. And were the offending aliens caught red-handed, woes many would betide them.

I do not mean the reader to infer that there are no cherry-trees in our parish save those on the common. Far from it! All the cottagers' gardens have at least one or two well-grown trees, and the freeholders and farmers have frequently whole orchards of them, and they grow in every hedgerow.

When the fruit begins to ripen, then are the cherry-trees as great an anxiety to their owners as ever a flock of ewes in the lambing season to the careful shepherd.

An incessant din pervades the air. Constant firing of guns, incessant yells and howls of boys, and beating of tin cans combine in a jumble of discordant sounds which renders hideous both the night and the day. When a newcomer, I earnestly inquired the meaning of the babel, and was told that the "birds wos that troublesome as wos never the like knowed on afore."

Some of the contrivances for scaring the feathered spoilers were amusingly ingenious. One aged man had suspended from the branches of his biggest tree festoons of those highly illustrated tin canisters which whilom were the receptacles of potted meat and lobster. Empty, battered, and fearsome, they hung on my friend's string, and their unique ugliness, one would have thought, was sufficient to put to flight any thrush or blackbird of taste.

Mr. Grubbins, however, did not rely on this characteristic of his garland. He had a complicated arrangement of twine which enabled him to set his tins a-clanging in the grey dawn, with a twitch of his big toe, from his bed. He kindly set the machinery in motion on my behalf. A sound more like the legendary clanking of an unquiet spirit's chains I never heard. It was grue

some in the extreme, and I saw, from the twinkle in Mr. Grubbins' eye, that the would-be depredators thought so too.

"Sims to me," said Mr. Grubbins reflectively, "that the birds as is now knows a sight more than un knowed in my grandfer's time. Sunce 'lectrick telegraffs and trains is come in, birds is more owdacious and Christen-like. Like enuff such critters goes with the times; and, wots more, they does."

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'Well, Mr. Grubbins, we must keep pace with them; and I must say your invention is likely to be some years yet ahead of their progress in wickedness."

The self-satisfied smirk of a creative genius flickered for a moment on Mr. Grubbins' wooden countenance.

"Now yer wouldn't 'ardly credit it," he went on, “but, when I wor a slip of a boy, one o'grannie's coloured 'ankerchers wos enuff to scare un; but now, Lor' bless yer, Neebor Smith, he rigged up a bogey wich he'd a-copied from Mistress Smith, and 'twas the wery himage of the ould leddy; but nex day a sparrer wor a-hopping about on top of un as bold as brass."

Cherry-picking is a busy time for our people. I happened the other day to get into conversation on this topic with a woman of our parish who had had a severe illness, but was convalescent. Mrs. Castor is the mother of five, and was rather inclined to bemoan her inability to take her share in the cherry-picking.

"But, Mrs. Castor, it must surely be trying work for a woman to mount those long ladders! And does it not give you a crick in your neck?"

"'Tis all practis," said Mrs. Castor, and, as she leaned back on the pillow in her chair, a softened dreamy look crept into the careworn face.

"I love it more nor any work I do. And, as for long ladders, why, lawks, they long uns is far the safest! Short uns, they be apt to wobble. But a long un, he straddles out broad at the foot, and his own weight keeps un steady-like. And, when I'm up a forty-round ladder 'mong the top boughs, 'tis grand, it is. P'raps a whisper o' wind comes and sets the branches a-moving, and then the ladder he sways back and fore gently as a rockin'-cheer. And I forgets all my worrits up there, and 'tis prime, 'tis so. And I never had no fear nor no giddiness or sich like, not from being on the ladder I haven't, not I."

"But is it not dangerous, reaching out for the fruit?"

"We does not stretch out to un more'n wot we can pull round to we.

We uses mostly a hook to bring un round, and, if bough be stiff-like, we leave un till ladder be moved."

"I suppose great care is required in plucking the cherries."

"'Tis so. Feckless pickers will spoil next year's cherryin'. For why? Cos o' breakin' the buds off. I've seen the grass strewn wi' buds after some. We hev to take un gently off by they's stalks. Some comes off quite easy. But there be cherries and cherries. Wi' some, do wot a body will, you split the bark, and 'tis bad, that."

"And what is the usual rate of wages for women in this kind of work?"

"Two shillin' a day, some gives. But that is good wage. Eightteenpence is wot I gets, and glad to. But there's this about it. The work is near home, and wi' they as we knows. Some has to tramp far afore they comes to their trees, and 'tis bad to tramp home miles and miles after your day's work."

One word as to the autumnal aspect of the cherry-trees. It is well nigh as beautiful as their spring array. The trees glow with various shades of red, from brightest scarlet to ruddy brown.

Our common looks like a harbour crowded with craft all bedecked with bunting in honour of a royal visit, while the gorse bushes, now a dark olive-green, resemble a swarm of boats plying upon its waters.

R. PARDEPP.