The Nation: Reprieve for Peter Rabbit

"Now and then Farmer Brown will frown on the old briar patch and call it wasteland and threaten to clear away all the bushes and trees," wrote Author Thornton Burgess in 1947, in "The Old Briar Patch." But in the end Farmer Brown always decided to save the patch — and so last week did the town of Sandwich, Mass. (pop. 5,000). By unanimous vote, the 800 citizens decided to spend $200,000 to buy up 57 acres of meadows, ponds and forest, including the five acres of bull and cat briars that har bored such Burgess creatures as Reddy Fox, Bobby...

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