COUNTY PRIDE.
Three English counties are now in possession of surveys which should be a condition precedent to all artistic pre- servation; and many of the rest are following suit. This form of literature, of which we shall see many more examples, was set on foot by Mr. Abercrombie, Professor of Civics (a suggestive title in itself) at Liverpool University. He was joint author, under the inspiration of Lord Milner and later of Lady Milner, of a survey and regional planning scheme of Kent, especially that part where the development of coal mines was imminent. There followed at some years' interval—thanks in part to Lord Astor's public-spirited zeal—the survey of the Thames Valley—a masterpiece of topographical portraiture—then of Berkshire as a county, and of parts of Oxfordshire, and now of Cornwall. A survey of Devon is in preparation. A facetious offspring of such serious constructive surveys is the series of "cautionary guides "—to St. Albans and Oxford—due to the polemical gaiety of Mr. Clough Williams-Ellis. If it had done nothing else—and it has done .much—these surveys would be a monument to the effective energy of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, on whose behalf Cornwall Coast, Moors and Valley (University of London Press. 17s. 6d.)
is prepared. • * a *
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