54 JANUARY 



of layering and wattling, carried out by an old country 

 craftsman* The top is as regular and level as a stone 

 coping, and the slanting stems half-severed with such 

 nicety that their life may be judged to a month ; and is 

 designed to coincide exactly with the growth of the new 

 shoots to hedge height. The new has not killed and will 

 not kill the old. Though we regret the beauty of the old 

 tithe barn, with its oaken Queen-posts and autumnal 

 tiles, yet we may feel that neater hedges, firmer roads, 

 better stock and higher wages are all attributes of the 

 beauty of the England of the future. The plover at any 

 rate still feel at home on the mechanised dairy farm. 



9- 



Now and again, as in the last week of January 1933, 

 we are given bearing ice that has all the virtues. The 

 water has set like well smoothed cement or well cut grass. 

 No weather has wrinkled the smooth surface while the 

 ice formed. You would indeed hardly believe that this 

 glassy surface could be compacted of a medley of angled 

 and pointed crystals, the pot-hooks, the iotas, the crooked 

 characters that you see forming only when the frost first 

 gets to work. Two or three inches of such ice are as 

 strong as plate glass. Not a bubble of air has been 

 caught in it to form treacherous eyes of &quot; cat ice.&quot; No 

 thawed rime or snow has mixed its opaque contamination 

 with the pure water. On one adorable lake in a famous 

 park the water was too deep and clean to allow of any 

 weed reaching the unsullied surface ; and the swans and 

 duck had been kept to their own particular quarters 

 where with much labour a clear pool was kept. As they 

 swam there among the floes, even the white swans looked 

 almost clumsy in comparison with some of the skaters. 



