ents, trench timbers, and sleepers
for light railways. Huge temporary villages have grown up for the
accommodation of the men employed, equipped with steam sawing-tackle,
canteens, offices and quarters, and with light railways running far
away into the plantations where the trees are cut. It was a wonderful
sight to see these busy centres alive with men and machinery, in
places where before there was nothing but the silence of the woods.
And it is curious that, as in the old days the New Forest provided the
oak timber for the battleships that fought upon the sea in Nelson's
time, so now, in the fighting on land, we have been able to export
from the same place hundreds of thousands of tons of fir for the use
of our troops in France and Belgium.

Old railway sleepers are exceedingly useful for many purposes on
farms, and as they are soaked in creosote, they last many years, for
light bridges and rough shelters, after they are worn out for railway
purposes. The railway company adjoining my land discarded a quantity
of these partly defective sleepers, and left them, for a time, lying
beside the hedge which separated the line from my fields. I applied to
the Company for some, and suggested that they need only be put over
the hedge, and I would cart them away. But that is not the routine of
the working of such matters; though it appeals to the simple rustic
mind, it would be considered "irregular." They had to be loaded on
trucks sent specially on the railway, taken to Worcester sixteen miles
by train, unloaded, sorted, loaded again, sent back to my station,
unloaded, loaded again on to my waggons, and carted a mile and a half
on the waggons which had been sent empty the same distance to the
station!

Overgrown old hedges are exceedingly pretty in autumn when hung with
clusters of "haws," the brilliant berries of the hawthorn, and the
"hips" of the wild rose. There is, too, the peculiar pink-hued berry
of the spindle wood, and, in chalky and limestone districts, the "old
man's beard" of the wild clematis, bright fresh hazel nuts, and golden
wreaths of wild hops. It is said that

"Hops, reformation, bays and beer
Came into England all in a year."

But it is certain that the wild hops at any rate must have been
indigenous, for one finds them in neighbourhoods far from districts
where hops are cultivated, and the couplet probably refers to the
Flemish variety, which would be the sort imported in the days of Henry