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A MOTOR GATE. - An experiment in devising a substitute for the gate that has to be. opened and shut has been tried recently in many country houses. : The idea is.ingenious and works well, so long as all your neighbours drive motor cars and not dogcarts or that prehistoric vehicle a barouche. It used to be a very slow bUsiness approaching one country house very familiar to me. There were a number of gates across the road through the Park ; and of late a sufficiency of lodge keepers was not available. They are indeed a vanishing luxury. Gates, of. Course, can be devised with a spring-lever which opens the gate as the wheels go over it, but the device `(at least, in my ex-perience) is apt to ben little .cumbrous,and is not always in order. The new alternative has nothing in it which can get out of order. Where the gate was, a trench is dug, sufficiently deep to defy sheep or cattle and of a qualified breadth- that gullies wading difficult. Across this gulf run two iron ladders, each wide enough to accommodate the broEidest balloon tire. Not even -rabbits, much less farm animals, will venture either across the ditch or the round rungs of this horizontal ladder, Which neverthelesS provides an adinirable track for the wheels of a motor: A. certain amount of -care is needed at night, but this only means a slight slowing up. Since such things as farm carts are -still in existence and just a few people drive a pony -lisp, bye-pass gates are provided ; but most visitors sail rapidly through the Park up to the hospitable house without check and without demanding the service of any lodge-keeper whatever.
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