MAGDALEN COLLEGE 211 



the sulphuric acid-laden raindrops,* the product of town life 

 and town industries, which are such an important factor in 

 the corrosion and disintegration of our Oxford calcareous 

 building-stone. Anything that will keep wet and frost from 

 such walls will lengthen their life. But when ivy is forcibly 

 stripped from a wall, however carefully done, the surface of 

 the stone gets stripped too, and masonry joints get opened, 

 as many places in the walls of Magdalen show. Such a wall 

 denuded of its natural covering, and with large portions of 

 its surface stripped, is then far more vulnerable to the 

 attacks of atmospheric and chemical agencies, and will soon 

 require restoration. 



A remarkable instance of the lengths to which ivy roots 

 will go in the ground in their search for water was brought 

 to the notice of the present Bursar a few years ago. When 

 some excavations were being made in the floor of the College 

 Chapel for the purpose of laying hot-water pipes, the workmen 

 found ivy roots under the pavement reaching as far as the 

 fourth stall beyond the Vice-President's seat. They had come 

 from the Ivy on the West Wall of the Chapel, and had grown 

 under the walls and floor of the antechapel and under the 

 organ-screen, or for a distance of about 20 yards in all. 



When we watch the deer peacefully drowsing on a summer 

 afternoon under the shade of the great elms of the Grove, 

 it is difficult to carry imagination back to the times when 

 this was the busy manufacturing quarter of Oxford, the abode 

 of seventy fullers and weavers, and resounding with the click- 

 clack of twenty-three looms. The raw material was brought 

 in barges up the Cherwell, and no doubt the finished cloth 

 was also taken away by water. 



Yet even now after prolonged drought the grass burns 

 brown over the foundations of the old houses, the ground 

 plans of which I have thus been able to survey, and have 



* It has been suggested that the vapours liberated at the Gas-works 

 are an important factor in the perishing of Oxford stonework. 



