27 MAY 1949, Page 20

COUNTRY LIFE

THAT beneficent body, the Pilgrims' Trust, it, and has been, chiefly interested in historic masonry, and. this year's report is no eireption. It contains, for example, an admirable account of that incomparable village-town Lavenlann Suffok. 'But the report ends with a pleasant tribute to Ilse Severn Wildfowl Trost, so which it gave L3,000. This Trust is unique in the world, partly for its historic interest. ReCords of the arrival and departure of geese had been kept (at Berkeley Castle) for over a hundred years when the Trust obtained the ground in 1947. The duck decoy in, the midst of the goose pound is one of the oldest and best. The assemblage of geese (especiady the white-fronted) grows more and more important as their traditional feedbag-places are whittled away. The wor14 has no such collection of 'naiades and species of duCk as have been collected on specially protected pools. The sea-wall along the saltings now gives incomparable opportunity for watching at chase quarters, and geese are among-the most difficult of all birds to approach, perhaps because they are quite the most tat.