THE SURREY PONDS 95 



its tiny basin, scarcely a yard across, shows in miniature 

 all the beauties of the larger pools. Ferns dip into 

 its surface from the bank behind, thick mosses clothe 

 its stones, and the crystal waters swell outwards in 

 gently widening rings from some slow-throbbing 

 invisible centre, where an unseen force is gradually 

 raising tiny grains of brown rock, which linger and 

 hang poised as if caught in water -cob webs, or wander 

 downwards, hesitating and reluctant, to the leafy 

 bottom of the spring. A culvert of oak-logs leads this 

 youngest mother of rivers to the central stream. 

 Beyond the spring the banks of the coomb once more 

 contract, and become lofty and precipitous. There, 

 overhung by oaks and drooping pines, which jut from 

 the high banks, sleeps a larger, blacker pool, deep and 

 narrow, dammed at the lower end by a thick dyke over 

 which the water rushes in cascades at either end. The . 

 pond covers a space of three or four acres, deep, and 

 full of large trout, which are fed not from the clear 

 waters and clean-cut banks of the mere, but by the 

 vast quantities of insects carried down from the water- 

 meadows above. At the coomb's head lies the queen 

 of the line of pools a straight and beautiful mere, 

 two hundred yards long and a hundred wide. At its 

 head is a lofty heath-clad hill, topped with a mass of 

 upright pines, whose grey stems stand like rows of 

 columns supporting the peaked foliage of their crests. 

 On either side, black alders and the grey stems and 

 ruddy leaves of oaks break the straight line of the 

 water, and dip their branches in the mere. On the 



