6 AUGUST 1921, Page 23

Ouse's Silent Tide. By the Rev. C. F. Farrar. (Bedford

: The Sidney Press. 15s. net.)—This is a capital book, pleasantly written and well illustrated, about the River Ouse, which rises in Western Bucks, close to the Oxfordshire border. Mr. Farrar is a native of the Ouse valley and has spent most of his life there. Further, he has voyaged in a canoe from Brackley, a few miles below the source, to Bedford, a distance of 102 miles, and thence by St. Neots, Huntingdon, and St. Ives to Earith, where the " Hundred Foot Drain " begins, leading in a long and weary straight line to Denver Sluice, and thence to King's Lynn. He describes in living detail the many villages and few towns that he passed on his way downstream. He also knows the Ouse from Earith to Ely and Littleport, and has ventured up the Little Ouse to Brandon and Thetford and even beyond that town. Mr. Farrar's book shows how amusing a river holiday may be. It requires only a little enterprise. His photographs are numerous and good ; there are also coloured reproductions of pictures of Bedford, with a good map of the Ouse watershed...