The carts are wonderfully primitive, two wheels being favoured for purposes which in England are always considered to require four. In fact the four-wheeled cart is difficult to discover anywhere in rural France. Even the giant tuns containing the cider they brew in Normandy, or those that are filled with wine in the Midi and other grape-producing districts of the land, are borne on two great wheels, and a pair of clumsy poles that, when horses are used, are tapered down to form shafts. Farms differ in character and attractiveness according to local conditions in every country, but France shows an astonishing range of styles. In the north one finds the timber-framed barn and outhouse delightfully prevalent, and in Normandy the farm often possesses the character of those to be seen in Kent and Sussex, although south of the Channel the compact, rectangular arrangement of barns is perhaps more noticeable than to the north. Between the Seine and the Loire, the timber-framed structures are very extensively replaced by those of stone; but although lacking in the interest of detail, their colour is exceedingly rich, for the thatched roofs are very frequently thick with velvety moss, and the cream-coloured walls are adorned by patches of orange and silvery-grey lichen. Wooden windmills are conspicuous on the shallow undulations of the plain of La Beauce. Where roofs are tiled, they too have become green with moss, giving a wonderful mellowness to the groups of buildings. Farther south the farms are still of stone, and some of them have an atmosphere of romance about them in their circular towers with high conical roofs, and with even the added picturesqueness of a turret or two. South of Poitiers the roofs of nearly all the houses take on the low pitch and the curved tile which belong to the whole of the southern zone of the country, and prevent one from noticing any marked architectural change in crossing the frontiers into Spain or Italy. Taken as a whole, the villages are without any of the tidy charm to be found in nearly every part of England. A hamlet gives the road that passes through it the appearance of a farmyard. Hay, straw, and manure are allowed to accumulate to such an extent that in the twilight a stranger might think he had inadvertently left the road and strayed into a farm. And whereas in England the rural hamlet does not usually crowd up to the thoroughfare, it is often very much the reverse in France. The writer has traversed thousands of miles of French roads, has wandered with a bicycle in the byways, but has not yet seen a village green with a pond and ducks, or even a churchyard with a suspicion of that garden-like finish which makes England unique. The velvety turf that grows on Britain's sheep-cropped commons does not exist outside that land, and one never even expects to find the French wayside relieved by such features.