THE USES OF LAKES.
SIR FRANCIS BACON was all against having pools in a garden, as "they breed flies and frogs." Superfine people improved on this, and went on to criticise the artificial lakes made to add to the scenery in parks and near country houses of the higher magnitudes. Some said they were "sham lakes," a phrase very much in vogue about the time that the " romantic " novel was in greatest favour. Others cried out against their expense, and said they were of no use; others that the water was stagnant, and that the mud accumulated and smelt unpleasant. Some even drained the lakes which their ancestors had made, and planted flower-beds and gardens on the sites. Yet they continue to be made, and it is quite impossible to fill their place in landscape with any adequate substitute. At the same time, the old lakes grow prettier and more natural every year, their use and manage- ment are much better understood, and in a summer like the present many of them are the most delightful additions of all the amenities which surround a beautiful old English house.
More than a century ago one of Lord North's family, then and now settled in Suffolk, published in the "Annals of Agri- culture" an essay on the usefulness, beauty, and proper main.
tenance of moats, a common addition to East Anglian houses. All that he says in praise of moats can be said, with much besides, in praise of lakes. The larger and deeper the lake the better, because the waters then cleanse themselves and never go foul, while they support a vastly greater quantity of fish-life. But from Virginia Water, the largest artificial piece of water in England, to the meres and lakes in ordinary country parks, there are very few which are not the most attractive spots on the estates which they adorn.
Their practical use is very considerable, and might be guessed from the fact that our ancestors, long before the days of ornamental gardening, made lakes. They were not usually of great size, and most were more of the class of ponds. But the monks at Beaulieu made a very fine lake just above their Abbey, damming up the river at the head of the tidal waters, and converting it into a beautiful mere, which was doubly useful, both to supply the water-mill and as a great reservoir for fish. Lakes act at once as part of the drainage system for rainfall on an estate, and as a most valuable source of water supply in a series of dry summers such as has been experienced lately. Millions of gallons are stored in them, where, with trees round and quantities of water plants on the sides and surface, evaporation is at a minimum, and the loss is often partly restored by the drip from the trees in dews and fogs. In hundreds of cases cattle have been brought from different and distant parts of the estate, or from adjacent farms, and put into parks where a fine lake lies, that the beasts might have water easily accessible at all hours of the day; and considerable prices have been paid for "boarding them out" in this way. Modern pumps and water-raising machinery have now made them play a very important part in house supply also, though not for drinking purposes, as, except in the North, the water is seldom of the kind suited to modern ideas of what is desirable for the table. But the supply for the fire-mains and tanks and for cleaning and gardening is now usually pumped up from the lake. It forms a reserve in dry seasons, even for the house, when the well or spring falls low, and it would otherwise be necessary to economise in that ever-increasingly used article, fresh water. They were for- merly, and in some cases are, and will be even more notably, a splendid source of food for a house, and of varied and interesting sport. Where the water is suitable, it is pos- sible to fill a lake with rainbow trout and perch, so as to provide a supply of the best class of fish all the year round, the perch being in season when the rainbow trout are "on." There are few more suggestive sights than to see a twenty-five-acre new lake covered from end to end with the rings made by rainbow trout rising all over it. The old owners used to look on a lake as a kind of fish reservoir, and take them out of this into stew-ponds merely to keep ready and handy for the table. We are not quite so practical now, being keener on stocking our lakes for sport than on keeping the fish for table. We noticed recently an old stew-pond abutting on a lake. The pond had been drained, but never planted, and the whole of the bottom made as splendid a piece of foliage garden as could be seen. It was a mass of various greens, light green sedge down the sides in the wildest profusion, mixed with various tall bright flowers, dark green bulrushes down the centre, and huge grey teazles, red frog-bits, and the giant water-dock. The ground was quite dry, too, though no doubt it was damp at the bottom. If this were mowed down, and the water once more let in, it would give fish-food for years without subsidising from outside.
The steady increase of wildfowl in England shows on these lakes more than anywhere, for it is there that they harbour in the day. The possession of a large sheet of water means that good wildfowl shooting may nearly always be secured there, if the water is only disturbed occasionally. Artificially reared wild duck are also a useful kind of stock, for which the lake is as useful as are the covers for pheasants. The waters and shores of large artificial lakes are also a store of natural history scenes, and that in districts where few persons suspect that such things are part of the regular aspects of Nature. One of the finest old Tudor houses in Essex, not greatly less in size than Audley End, has the additional attraction of a magnificent lake running for some three-quarters of a mile through the park, very broad, very deep, and set underneath such a splendid frame of old Scotch
fire, oaks, giant alders, long grass slopes, reed beds, and water flowers as no mere imagination could put into a picture. At the beginning of the month, to make things finer still, hundreds of acres of hay, new cut, were drying in the hot sun; filling the whole air with perfume, while the wind was carrying the pollen from the myriad flowers in the hay, and scattering it over the lower levels of the lake like gold dust on the water. With their feet in the water and- their heads (at last) in the sun, the lilies, reeds, irises, forget- me-nots, and all the rest of the water-nymphs' flower-garden were rushing into flower according to their kind. The young heads of the smaller bulrush, with slim brown-velvet spikes, the young reed-feathers, and the green uprights of the sedge just overtopped the yellow iris, which stood out against the rest; exactly of the shape of the fleur-de-lis on the Oriflamme. These are the mixed borders of the natural gardens round the lake. Another device not made by bands looked almost a "set-piece." Several little islets, a few feet square, stood out of the water, each covered with a mass of the longest, greenest, and shiniest rushes. On the edge were forget-me-nots, and that bright- red ragged robin that grows by the water, and in the centre of and mixed with the rushes a delicate white cruciferous blossom, growing at about equal distances on thin stems branching everywhere, giving the appearance of frost crystals scattered among all the green rush setting. The flower fringe was not continuous. For long intervals the grass came to the water's edge, and the cattle could drink where they pleased, as the lake came brimming up to the lip of the grass. Along these flats the half-wild Canada geese and their broods come to preen their feathers, a long business with waterfowl, which seem to pass almost every single feather through their bill. In the bays between the reed-fringe were the young wildfowl, ducks of various kinds, coots, dabchicks, waterlaens, and cygnets, and one or two "surprises," such as might be expected near a lake of such unusual size and beauty. People who keep falcons know the various accidents which the flight feathers of birds meet with during the critical period when they are growing from the sheath. One of the Inost vexing of these mishaps is when a falcon refuses to feed or is ill when it is growing a pair of flight feathers. During the foodless day the growth of the feathers is not nourished, and what is called a "starve mark" comes right across the web, and sometimes over the shaft, causing the feather to break later. The falcon's feathers usually come out in pairs, one on each wing, so that the bird is never " lop- sided," and always has a majority of flight feathers serviceable. Geese and ducks, especially the former, tend to shed their flight feathers almost simultaneously, which makes them quite helpless for a time, and a number of these dropped by the Canada geese lay about. Apparently, the pen feathers; of the geese suffer in the same way as those of the falcon if the bird which is growing them goes without its dinner. Three quill feathers, dropped by the same bird, had a strong "starve mark" right across both webs, which in places were almost attenuated to nothing. These Canada geese were very wary, independent birds. They nested on an island, being quite aware that they were not viewed with favour, and managed to bring off a very large family just before orders were given to take their eggs. They swam in the middle of the lake in the most suspicious way, evidently well able to take care of themselves.
Lake beads are always interesting, but this one particularly so. The feeding stream entered through a thick swampy grove of alders and aspen poplars. The leaves of the quiver. ing aspens, with their specially arranged stalk, were trembling in the breeze incessantly, and the lower branches were full of small warblers and whitethroats. In the reeds the reed- warbler as well as the sedge-warbler was in full and in- cessant song; reed-buntings were feeding their young, and da,bchicks were rustling with their piping broods in the rushes ; and what apparently was an albino moorhen dis- appeared in the thick cover. Two or three families of great crested grebes were diving in the centre, and on the margin, where the water was shallowest and warmest, shoals of roach were "tailing" head downwards; while hordes of little bleak were exploding with alarm when pike went past every few minutes. The mallard drakes were all in eclipse plumage, and looked dowdy and black ; but in winter they will be swimming in hundreds on the waters, with strange ducks attracted in their nightly flights.
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