56 JANUARY 



ishing the safety, for the commonest of all the old sayings 

 about ice is true enough : &quot; She cracks, she bears ; she 

 bends, she breaks.&quot; The fusillade was a salute, not a 

 hostile demonstration. The pioneer skater might trip 

 on weeds or air-holes, but would run no further risk if 

 he dodged the main line of the stream. 



The stream is to be avoided by those who skate ; but 

 never at any time are its banks and the sedgy margins so 

 full of incident as in days of frost. All still waters are 

 sealed : the long dykes of Cambridgeshire Fens, no less 

 than the country-house lakes of Hertfordshire or the 

 meres of Cheshire or the meadows at Oxford. A sheet 

 of black ice, a land iron-shod by cold repels every bird 

 and mammal that can find escape. You will scarcely 

 find a footprint on the biggest sheet of ice, and the tracks 

 across the dyke-are straight and narrow as the beast can 

 make them. Every animal would escape so barren a 

 desert. Where do they resort ? A favourite haunt is 

 the running stream. Alongside rivers that flow into 

 London, and even on the lower reaches, you may make 

 sure of certain birds, rare and shy at other seasons, and, 

 if fortune is with you, discover rarities of whose presence 

 you have had no suspicion at all. You may travel half 

 across the Fens, those plains of still waters, and not flush 

 a wing of any of the birds that are held to be characteristic 

 of such country. The snipe were plentiful in the Fens 

 in September; they rose in quantity even from the 

 potato fields. Not a snipe remains in the fields of 

 Manea, in the sedges of Wicken, or along the whole 

 length of the twenty-foot dyke. But walk up the Ver or 

 the Lea towards London ; and even when close to London 

 it is odds that you flush full snipe, and perhaps Jack 

 snipe, fat mallard, and little teal, with the feather on the 

 wing, greener than any on the green plover which will 



