OPINIONS differ on the merits of the rural scene. The reaction of the irreverent early Victorian, Sidney Smith, was one of ennui: "I have no relish for the country," he wrote to a friend. "It is a kind of healthy grave. I have seen nobody since I saw you last but persons in orders. My only varieties are vicars, rectors, curates and, every now and then (by way of turbot), an archdeacon."
Rupert Brooke, however, had quite a different emphasis. He conjures up an idyllic picture with his famous couplet:
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
And then he goes on to provide a possible explanation for the plethora of clergy that so annoyed the Rev Sidney Smith:
Curates, long dust, will come and go
On lissom, clerical printless toe;
And oft between the boughs is seen
The sly shade of a Rural Dean.
But country life for many urban residents in Ireland is epitomised by the list of veterinary ailments often heard before the tea-time weather forecast on the radio.
They include hoose, scour, mange and lice, the dreaded rhynchosporium and many other infestations singularly unattractive. Some, however, are highly dependent on the weather - like the little creature called Fasciola hepatica, the parasite responsible for liver fluke.
As its common name implies, this troublesome flat-worm infests the livers of sheep and cows, reducing weight-gain, milk yield and fertility. When the time is right, Fasciola hepatica produces millions of eggs, which pass to the outside world, hatch, and seek the mud snail, Lymnaea truncatula, as an intermediate host. In due course, the maturing worms leave the snail again to settle on the blades of grass, there to be ingested by unwary grazers.
Now, it is at the stages of its life when it is exposed to the elements, between its two hosts, that liver fluke is sensitive to weather.
The eggs need temperatures of more than 10 Celsius for successful development; they also need a plentiful supply of moisture, since they die unless they can enjoy continuous immersion in a film of water.
Since the temperature during an Irish summer is nearly always above the critical 10 value, rainfall is by far the most important variable for predicting the rate of infestation in the months to come.
Summer rainfall figures, therefore, can be used to estimate the likely prevalence of liver fluke later in the year, and to identify those areas of the country that are likely to be worst affected.