Weihaiwei, 9.—Returning to Weihaiwei is always a mixed bag of sorrows and joys (generally in the order named): the bowling green has grown nothing but weeds and where it should be smoothest there are nothing but hills and dales; my garden-man Jeeves explains this by the fact thay the more he rolls it the less the grass grews because, "this side mud blong all sam blick"; I send for a few weedy-ladies (very handsome and talif Ave dames) and within two days the weed$'are tone and grass begins to grow where we put in new stolons, The fruit crop appears $ be a complete failure (except for hundreds of Bounds of yet unripe plums and greengages): looves says, "this Maggapies too muchee chow fruits; rain come, then sun come, and all chellies spoil; and (shaking head) disa folleign medicine no use for sums": there certainly seems no doubt that none of our insects have any proper respect for the grefiest European chemists: even the sticky stuff we put round the trunks i" stop the beetles and bugs from crawling up dries up in the sun, and all the entomologists' pets bring their children with them to wipe their feet on the "bands" before moving higher up to start new families. But it is nic? to know that the local "Maggie" has already brough: up a second family, in spite of the fact that Magpies are supposed to be single-brooded (perhaps this is why they have eaten so much fruit): and it is nice to know that the Swallows, hatched out weeks ago, still play and wiser in my verandah; and that in. Stead of one Meadow Bunting I now have ai least three sitting round singing their mournful little lay—and White-eyes nesting—and Willow-Warblers chirping "in the trees. And Shaped swarm of wild honey-bees hang yesterday we found, a great ph ing in a plum tree: so Jeeves—always willing io get something for nothing—fixed up a wooden hive below them in which they are already at home: Jeeves is not afraid of bees, whereas perhaps I am....after all I have been stung many times in the city where T work.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.