duty spurs on
To lead laborious days, like CURZON,
Is not the life of BILLY MERSON
Or any gay inferior person.

* * * * *

_RUS IN URBE._

The Selborne Society, which used to be a purely rural expeditionary
force, has lately taken to exploring London, and personally-conducted
tours have been arranged to University College in darkest Gower
Street, where Sir PHILIP MAGNUS and Sir GREGORY FOSTER will act
as guides, and to the Royal Courts of Justice, where Sir EDWARD
MARSHALL HALL, K.C., "will describe the methods of conducting civil
actions." What GILBERT WHITE would say to all this brick-and-mortar
sophistication we do not dare to guess. All that we venture to do is
to suggest one or two more urbane adventures.

Why, for example, should not a visit be paid to the House of Lords,
under the direction of the new LORD CHANCELLOR? Five minutes spent on
the Woolsack in such company not only would be a treasured memory,
but a liberal (or, at any rate, a coalition) education. After such an
experience all the Selbornians should come away better fitted to climb
the ascents which life offers.

Again, if Sir HORACE MARSHALL, the Lord Mayor, invited the Society to
the Mansion House they might be enormously benefited. Of turtle doves
they naturally know all; GILBERT WHITE would have seen to that; but
what do they know of turtle soup? Well, the LORD MAYOR would instruct
them. He would show them the pools under the Mansion House where these
creatures luxuriate while awaiting their doom; he would indicate the
areas beneath the shell from some of which is extracted the calipash
and from some the calipee; he might even induce the Most Worshipful
Keeper of the Turtles, O.B.E., to discourse on the subject.

Then there is New Scotland Yard. It would be a scandal for the
members of the Selborne Society not to visit that home of amity
and see all the New Scots at work in tracking down the breakers of
the laws that are made in the picturesque building with the clock
tower so close by. And not very distant is the War Office, where
mobilisation-while-you-wait may be studied at first hand, we don't
think. Indeed, London offers such opportunities that we shall be
surprised if the Selborne Society ever looks at a mole or a starling
again.

* * * * *

THE ROAD TO THE RHINE.

BUSINESS LEAVE.

Of course we _know_ demobilisation is proceeding apace. We _know_ that
pivotal