Country Life
RIBBON DEVELOPMENT.
Lack of rain has brought out one of the essential evils of the "ribbon development" against which the Council for the Preservation of Rural England with every true countryman continually protests. Speculative builders buy road front- ages, erect bungalows and little villas till one village is strung out into the next. They obscure the view of the country for road travellers and vulgarize the road.
" Some minds improve by travel, others rather Resemble copper wire or brass,
Which gets the narrower by going farther."
Many of our villages are utterly spoiled (like Rae Wilson) by this extended narrowness, which is offensive to any country- man who takes broad views, and the evil does not exist only in the domain of aesthetics. The ribbon development is utterly pernicious economically and is the despair of the sanitary engineer. Scores of " ribboners " have been driven out of their little houses during this summer's drought by lack of water. The " hen-scoops " that serve for wells dried up and no district water supply exists.
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