SURREY SCENES 



THE SURREY PONDS 



POOLS and still waters are as characteristic of the 

 country in which they lie as rivers and running brooks. 

 The beauties of a Highland tarn and a Norfolk broad 

 are as separate and appropriate to their own surround- 

 ings as the rushing moorland stream, and the level 

 and tranquil windings of the Waveney or the Yare. 

 Even the clay-embedded water-holes of the Suffolk 

 farms, surrounded by their ragged clumps of thorns, 

 and peopled by ancient carp which burrow in the 

 mud in winter, and welter in the thick and tepid 

 waters in the summer droughts, have a certain 

 interest native to the soil ; and the moats of the 

 decayed manor-houses, where rich franklins once kept 

 their "bream and luce in stew," are still haunted by 

 traditions of monster pike, the pets and familiar friends 

 of past tenants of the farms. Among the bright 

 heaths and moorlands of Surrey, and the adjacent 

 corners of Hampshire and Sussex which meet near 



