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AUTUMN AND WINTER 



that the writer made step off the platform at Holme 

 Station, on the Great Northern Railway, just south of Peter- 

 borough, straight on to a dyke and make a forty- mile trip 

 along the various dykes. They are mathematically called in 

 the vernacular, from their breadth, the sixteen-foot and the 

 thirty-foot, and the rest. Such a journey through Chatteris 

 and March, and along the old Nene, gives a new picture 

 of England. The birds are different ; you may put up a 

 number of Brent geese and many mallards. The general 

 scene is pure plain broken by windmills, and the chief sound 



BRENT GEESE 



is the ring of the fenmen's skates. They travel often in com- 

 panies of six or eight, one close behind the other, swinging 

 in time like one machine. 



A bearing frost, a condition in which most people except 

 hunting-folk delight, is not so harmless as snow. If it come 

 late and the season is warm, it may destroy wheat which 

 is winter-proud, perhaps kill winter beans and play havoc 

 among the tenderer roses of our garden. But its visitation 

 is beneficial on the whole. The moisture freezing and swell- 

 ing in the earth crumbles it into a fine seed-bed. The cold 

 keeps back growth and prevents that cardinal danger of the 

 English climate, an early spring. Weeds have always 

 sprung up in quantity since the autumn, and some of them 

 such as dandelions may begin to seed as early as February. 



