The tow-path terminates for the time being abruptly opposite the snug village of Basildon; this may be gained by enlisting the services of the ferryman, who dwells in the solitary cottage under a line of full-headed pollards. The village and even its church are half-hidden in foliage, and there is an effective background formed by the plantations of Basildon Park. Passing peeps of the house are vouchsafed as we descend the river, steering by the Berkshire side of the group of islets in the middle. The parted stream marks the site of yet another Hart's Lock (Hart's Old Lock), of which no token remains. The chalk downs still appear on the Berkshire side, and the ridge that maintained Hart's Wood swerves in unison with the course of the river, and, well covered with wide-spreading oaks, shelters Coombe Lodge from the north and east. The osier beds of the Thames give employment to numbers of women and children, and maintain a distinct riverside trade. On a recent visit I was fortunate in witnessing the operations of an osier farm, thus described in my note-book:--The men, women, and children clustered on the farther shore, busily engaged in an occupation which is not at first apparent, come upon you with a surprise as you enter the next meadow. Out of the river formal growths of tall green sheaves seem to flourish within a ring fence. There is a rude building, half shed and half cottage, at the mouth of a gully, and in an open space between it and the Thames the above-mentioned people are working. Proceeding down the path the mystery gradually unfolds. We are facing an osier farm. The tall slender sheaves are bundles of withies that have been reaped from the islands and osier beds, and punted to this depôt. Here, in a square enclosure, they are planted _en masse_ in the water, and the cut branches make the best they can of divorcement from the parent root, and preserve their vitality until they are required for use. The girls and boys are very handy at the operation of peeling. They take up a withy from the bundle last landed from the pound, draw it rapidly through a couple of pieces of iron fixed to a stand, and in a twinkling the bright green osier has become a snow-white wand. This humble colony of workers, about whom little is generally known, is one of many engaged in an out-of-the-way industry, hidden from the eyes of the world in some nook of the Thames. It is the first which meets our observation on the journey from Oxford. But even this simple form of industry has challenged the attention of the scientific. At the Inventions Exhibition of 1885 at South Kensington, an apparatus for willow-peeling was shown amongst the labour-saving machines. [Illustration: GORING, FROM THE TOLL-GATE.]