RURAL ENGLAND.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 119, 18 November 1908, Page 6

RURAL ENGLAND.

A delightful picture of rural England is presented to colonial readers in tho pages of the Sydney Daily Telegraph by Mr Henry Gullett, a» Australian journalist of distinction. The scene is near Dorking, "'in Surrey, only twenty miles from London, where one looks- across "miles of meadow lands and cultivated fields, across a beautiful expanse of this historic English soil, with its little clearings, its clumps of elms and beeches and chestnuts, and many other trees we have hitherto known only as aliens," where the eye lingers on manor houses and farmsteads and thatched cottages, church towers and old mills, and one feels more .completely than in either St. Paul's , or the Abbey "what it is to be one of this breed of Englishmen." The smallness of everything astonishes the Australian. The tiny fields with their hedges seem too small fot a team of horses; the little flocks of sheep feeding or lying on little lawns, provoke laughter, and ' are reminis-. j cent of the Australian motherless pet ; lamb which. has grown "cheeky"! about the homestead. One marvels at the adaptability which enables the Englishman bred "in these beautiful, irregular, tiny old gardens'' to make himself at homo in a very few years in the great spaces of the colonies, i The difference between ploughing in ; Surrey and ploughing on Australian ; wheat lands is like the difference between navigating a barge in the crowded Thames and taking a liner ] across the Pacific. Th^' "Surrey' far- , -mer'^is' I ' old-fashioned. ' : " His -implo- ' ments are of an old type, ' and he is wasteful of land and labour. His straggling hedges - are often half-a-/ chain wide, and his teams waste 1 much time in turning in tho little fields. ' An. Australian would probably at once root up half the hedges, ■and -so effect a considerable saving in land -and colour. The characteristic of the landscapo is contentment. '■' Everything oh four legs in England = seems to be "rolling fat." Mr Gut ! Lett had not. seen an animal out of condition since ho arrived in the country. : ■ " ;