The post reaching the editor’s desk in the hours after Wednesday’s session of the Reed-Bed Subcommittee was, for so quiet a stretch, of a surprising weight. Three letters are reproduced here. The editor chose them for their bearing on the matters before the Subcommittee on the twenty-second, and on a further question that is at present an open one: what these pages ought, in the weeks of season that remain, to take pains to attend to. The bodies are the writers’ own, set down as filed. Where a reply seemed called for, the editor has added one in brackets, and nowhere else.
From the Junior Member of the Reed-Bed Subcommittee, filed Wednesday evening
Sir, I write to thank the Clerk, through the pages of your gazette, for the candour of his remark of Wednesday afternoon. I had not expected him to take a position on the matter under consideration; he did not, in the strict sense, take one; what he did take was, however, the kind of observation which has not, in this Subcommittee’s present season, been frequently offered, and I record my appreciation. I should add, for the avoidance of any inference to the contrary, that I do not consider Wednesday’s deferral a setback. The qualification attached to the minute is, on my reading, the first occasion in this season on which the form of a deferral has departed from the customary form. The departure is, in the form, small. I do not consider the matter to be other than it has been.
A JUNIOR MEMBER OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE
[The editor records the letter with thanks. At the writer’s own request, made when he filed it, no further identification is appended.]
From the eldest of the dabchicks of the west pier, filed Thursday morning
Sir, I write on behalf of the family of dabchicks of the west pier to enquire whether the gazette will, in the period now under way, be making any continued note of the heron’s stationary period at the pier. The bird has, on our household’s count, occupied the position which is its customary station continuously since the morning of the ninth instant, with the exception of one brief absence on the morning of the sixteenth which we are not, at this time, prepared to characterise as a departure. We have no view to advance on the bird’s intentions, and we remain, as we have throughout, not unsettled. We had merely wondered whether the gazette continued to consider the matter newsworthy at intervals shorter than those it has lately observed.
A FAMILY OF DABCHICKS, BY THE ELDEST OF THEIR NUMBER
[With thanks to the household for the enquiry. It is the most direct word from the family of dabchicks since the present pattern took hold at the west pier, and the editor notes the fact with some interest. The gazette does still consider the matter newsworthy. It will record the bird’s continued presence at the customary intervals, and the more readily should those intervals come, on either party’s account, to be thought insufficient.]
From an anonymous correspondent, filed Thursday afternoon
The gazette is invited to consider, on the evidence of the season to this hour, whether certain matters are not best left alone. Three of those matters, of which the gazette will, on consideration, be in no doubt as to identity, would be the better for a period of quietness on the gazette’s part. The correspondent does not wish to make this representation under any name, and signs only as follows.
[The letter is signed with a small and not unfriendly drawing of a single leaf. No further mark is appended.]
[The editor records the letter as received. With no further indication to go on, the editor declines to say which three matters the correspondent has in mind. Whether the gazette has been intemperate on any matter is a question a paper is properly slow to answer in its own pages, and this one will be slow. The editor notes, too, that the leaf is of the species the correspondent’s hand renders with care. Having no ground on which to do otherwise, the editor has taken the request under consideration, in the spirit in which it seems to have been meant.]
A correspondent has asked the gazette to leave certain things alone. The editor, on this week’s correspondence at least, will start with the comment.