the centre of the field comes the loud, harsh cry of the corn-crake, that bird so often heard and so seldom seen. Sometimes the crop is the drooping oats or the "bold and bearded barley;" but whatever be the grain, there is the fat, solemn rook, who reluctantly wheels away from his farinaceous banquet, to hide for a few minutes in the long row of elms in the adjoining field. Close to Culham the stream divides, a broad rushy channel flowing past Sutton Courtney, with its venerable Edwardian Manor House and the well-known weirs, while a straight, narrow, and not very picturesque cut, makes direct for the Lock. In passing there is a very pretty glimpse of Culham Church, which stands out effectively from a background of trees, and looks in the distance the ideal of an old parish church. A nearer view reveals that most of the building is very modern, and that even the square tower dates only from the days of William and Mary. Culham is a pretty and interesting little place, and still happily preserves its village green. A few yards below Culham Lock the river assumes its old proportions, the water from the deep millpool at Sutton, where there are fishes indeed, now forming the old main channel with the cut as a mere contributary. Hereabouts there are usually one or two camping parties, the proximity of a lock-keeper's cottage being a convenience which none can appreciate so well as a tired oarsman. Although the immediate banks continue flat, the country around grows more rugged, the meadows and cornfields become billowy, and sloping gently up long miles ahead, although apparently no farther distant than the next parish, is seen Wittenham Clump, with its smooth grassy sides and little grove of trees atop. Hence away to Shillingford it is rarely out of sight, for the river winds so sinuously through the valley over which the Clump watches that between Clifton Hampden and Day's Lock it describes a perfect semicircle. The Clump forms a majestic background to many a stretch of varied timber and parti-coloured fields. Something like a mile below Appleford Bridge commences another unlovely necessary cut--a kind of graduated penance in preparation for the severer _supplice_ of Clifton Lock. He who elects to see the river-land from the towing-path has a decided advantage over the oarsman, where these cuts and locks are concerned. This particular cut is more tolerable than some of those which the exigencies of navigation have rendered necessary. The Berkshire shore has a fringe of plantations and mossy creepered banks, which compensate somewhat for the nakedness of the Oxford bank at this point. At the end of this straight channel is Clifton Lock. The keeper's cottage is in summer a lovely picture, for it stands in a little garden ablaze with brilliant flowers of the old-fashioned stock viewed with disfavour by the scientific gardener; while the cottage walls are covered with creepers yellow and russet. Just clear of the