4 JANUARY 1930, Page 20

The luck of the ballot has fallen to the author

of the new Bill for preservation. It is a good Bill as well as a lucky one. Let us welcome the omen, and try the " Sortes Vergilianas." The passage on which my eyes alight turns out to be this : " Amoena piortun concilia Elysiumque cob," which (if a zeugma is permitted) may be Englished : "I support the Bill of the amenity group and hope to inhabit Elysium"! By means of this, and in spite of the threat of the spoliators and the influences of Hades, our rescuers will have brought us back to "—locos laetos et amoena vireta.

Fortunatorum nemorum sedesque beatas," and the " largior nether" that invests our fields will no longer smell only of petrol and the unpleasantnesses that come in its wake.