COUNTRY LIFE "Elms have collapsed in the Christchurch meadows and
the Botanic Gardens are a lake." Such a particular lament is a commonplace: wind and flood co-operated in ruin over most of the island. No place is under more general threat than the Fens. The lower (and most lovely) reaches run sluggishly through very low-lying land ; and as soon as the no-longer " uxorious " river (in Horace's description of the Great Flood) tops its banks the rich farmland becomes a mere of indefinite proportions. How moving the spectacle is! It made even Jean Ingelow into a notable poet.
So farre, so fast the eygre drave, The heart had hardly time to beat, Before a shallow, seething wave Sobbed in the grasses at our feet.
The feet had hardly time to flee Before it brake against the knee And all the world was in the sea.
Dwellers and producers about the lower Ouse (which can hardly escape even after it reaches the Wash) are at the mercy of the upper Ouse, and for many years there was an unceasing sense of hostility on the part of the victims against their upper masters. It is a strange country. How difficult to imagine that it was once in part a great forest, and the habitation of wolf and hippopotamus and bos primigenius and many another wild beast!
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