Old Crafts Anyone who desires to absorb the tradition of
the local craft will find Mr. Hennell's well-stored book an invaluable aid. Sometimes he strays pleasantly outside his strict thesis. There is a little diseursus, for example, on the skill of the villager in foretelling his own weather. One of the points omitted—in a chapter that perhaps shows a good deal less research work than others—is that weather prophecy was particularly associated with the miller. Not so long ago a friend of mine bought some drawings of clouds by Constable ; and it seems that as a boy he was sent out, not once but many times, by his master, the miller, to look at the clouds to the end of deciding whether it was a good milling day and how the wings were to be set. And the clouds are the alphabet of weather lore for the field observer. I doubt if any loss has so impoverished village history as the extinction of the local wind and water mills. They were the focus of local agricultural wealth and interest. How very'few remain t One of the last and most historic (on the Lea) was closed some two years ago. Almost every crack in its oaken beams is eloquent of dead history. Not less rich in memory, and much richer in scenic beauty, was the noted mill destroyed root and branch some years earlier by the Goths of Gochnancliester;
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