Glassy Gardens I like the story (which has pleased the
manufacturers. of cloches) of a swan that dived among the gardens just outside Cheltenham because it mistook the carpet of glass for water. Just such an impression- struck me the first time that I looked down on the French gardens on the out- skirts of Rouen, where the bell-jars and frames, still popular in France and Holland, gleamed like shining water. The swan in question (though , not the cloches) has recovered from the impact. Birds make surprising mistakes. For example, in a district I knew well, a covey of partridges suddenly plunged to their death into a stretch of flood-water in the Huntingdonshire Fens. Did they perhaps see their own reflections ? More than once, it is said, airmen have been unable to distinguish glass from water. After all, " glassy " is almost a constant epithet of a calm water surface.
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