i62 
NATURE NOTES 
Whitgift Hospital. — We are glad to hear that the pro- 
posal to sacrifice this interesting old building at Croydon to 
widen a street for tramways without demolishing a public-house 
on the other side of the road, has been shelved — for a time, at 
least. “A Croydon Councillor,” writing to the justifies 
the proposed vandalism by the amusing plea that the hospital 
is only brick, and therefore of no great value. Only brick, 
forsooth ! Hampton Court, St. James’s Palace, Hurstmonceaux 
Castle, Lincoln’s Inn Gate and St. John’s College, Cambridge, 
are only brick ! 
Ivy versus Antiquity. — The destructive effects of ivy on 
masonry have been recently exemplified in the collapse of the , 
ancient church of Chingford in Essex, owing to the encroach- 
ments of the creeper. Some of the building dates probably from 
about 1300, but great part of it was reconstructed in the fifteenth 
century. Although partially abandoned in 1845, when a new 
church was built, it was still cherished as an interesting monu- 
ment, and money was occasionally spent in keeping it in repair. 
Meanwhile, the ivy was encouraged as an element of the pictur- 
esque, and attained a wonderfully luxuriant growth, smothering 
the roof under its foliage, and rendering it a favourite subject 
for photography. In some of the windy weather of last Feb- 
ruary, the catastrophe came, the roof of the whole nave and 
of one aisle coming down with a crash that has shaken and dis- 
located the walls. It now presents an aspect of hopeless ruin 
with the parasitic growth hanging about it in coils and trails 
where it has been stripped from its support. Its stems had 
attained a great size, measuring 27 and 24 inches in girth. 
— Tablet. 
The Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society. — 
We have received the Proceedings at the General Meeting of 
this excellent Society held June g, together with the Report, 
then presented, for 1902-3, and the Report of the Kent and 
Surrey Committee of the Society for 1903. It is probably 
without precedent that the Society should after forty years be 
presided over by its first President, the Right Hon. G. J. 
.Shaw-I^efevre ; and, whilst he had undoubtedly good reason 
to congratulate his colleagues on a busy year of many achieve- 
ments, he had equally good reason for insisting on the continued 
necessity for watchfulness and effort, and for appealing for 
wider support. With a very small income the Society has 
done wonders, and is now even being invited by landowners 
to arbitrate over disputed rights of way. Mr. J. St. Loe 
Strachey, at the Meeting, made some .sensible remarks on the 
needless damage of open spaces by the digging of gravel and 
flints by local road making authorities; and there was much 
in the Chairman’s Address which, did space permit, we should 
have liked to reproduce here. We must, liowever, content 
