APRIL 135 



there is no doubt that by the morning she would have been dead 

 from fright and exhaustion. As it happened, however, by the 

 help of another man and a rope he was able to get her up with 

 no worse hurt than a little hair rubbed off her eyebrow. 



April 8 (Good Friday). This afternoon I went to Beding- 

 ham. As I leaned my bicycle against a post of the pond 

 fence, I noticed that the shallow edge of the water was simply 

 full of frogs (some of them dead) and spawn. This pond sup- 

 plies drinking-water for the farm, and certainly it might occur to 

 the uninitiated that a plentiful flavour of frog and occasional 

 globules of spawn would not improve its quality or wholesome- 

 ness. As a matter of fact, however, many of the people about here 

 absolutely prefer pond to well water not superior pond water 

 such as that at Bedingham, which comes from a deep, recently 

 cleaned moat, and is filtered in a gravel drain, but thick stuff 

 from any little roadside pit-hole. Nor is this water as a rule in 

 any way unwholesome at any rate, to those who are accustomed to 

 drink the stuff. Frogs and ducks and countless long-legged insects 

 evidently do not disagree with man. Of course, if a pond 

 becomes infected with any disease-bacillus it is another matter ; 

 for instance, a year or two ago there was an outbreak of diphtheria 

 in ' the Parishes ' from this cause. But the same danger exists in 

 the case of wells ; indeed, I would rather have to deal with an 

 infected pond than an infected well, as in the first the source of 

 the mischief is more likely to be noticed and easier to remedy. 

 Also I believe, though I have no scientific authority for the state- 

 ment, that infected water which is exposed to the air and sunlight 

 is much less likely to be virulent than that which is shut up in the 

 darkness of a well. 



While I am on this subject I will say that, so far as my 

 observation goes, the system of water-supply in villages appears to 

 be abominable, and is, indeed, a question which should be taken in 

 hand by Parliament or the County Councils. So long as it is left to 

 small communities, and, for that matter, sometimes to large ones 



