2 MARCH 1934, Page 17

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With the passing of the traditional locally made imple- ments, the countryman's habits and customs, too, have changed. Festivals, and embellishments to workmanship, have been largely given up. It is the more fortunate, then, that Mr. T. Hennell, in his book Change in the Farm, published by the Cambridge University Press, has made a catalogue of the old tools and implements of the countryside, and has described forgotten manners and customs. He has been at pains to provide illustrations of country-made wagons, ploughs and harrows, of rick baubles, of flails and of har- vesters' knots and straw-workers' patterns. Soon the occasion must have passed when such relics could have been collected and described. Our museums can tell us a very great deal about the ways of life of the ancient Egyptians, but very little indeed of the ways of life of our own immediate forbears. The Swedes, the Danes and the Americans have been more conscious of realities ; they have their museums of country life, preserving for worth-while contemplation . its architecture, its furnishing, its clothing and its tools.