12 NOVEMBER 1948, Page 5

Not many people, I imagine, will have read of the

fate of the famous avenue of limes in the Trinity Backs at Cambridge without recalling the well-known In Memoriam stanza : And last Up that long walk of limes I passed To see the rooms in which he dwelt.

The link with Tennyson and Hallam must be broken. Some of the trees are dangerous, and no doubt it is better to fell the lot and replant with new ones of a uniform size than to fill isolated gaps with saplings which would look incongruous for perhaps half a century. But suns lacrimae rerum. JANus.