Still, in early morn, in Wicken Fen, precautions are taken by the autumn sedge-cutter against the dew and the exhalations from the earth, heavy with possibilities of marsh fever. He ties a handkerchief over his mouth for that purpose, while to protect himself against the sharp edges of the sedge he wears old stockings tied round his arms, leather gaiters on his legs, and a calfskin waistcoat. The modern Fen-folk are less troubled with ague than their immediate ancestors, but the opium habit has not wholly left them. Whether they purchase the drug, or whether it is extracted from the white poppies that are a feature of almost every Fenland garden, they still have recourse to it, and "poppy tea" is commonly administered to the children to keep them quiet while their parents are at work afield. The Fenlanders are, by consequence, a solemn and grim race, shaking sometimes with ague, and at others "as nervous as a kitten," as they are apt to express it, as a result of drugging themselves. Another, and an entirely innocent, protection against ague is celery, and the celery-bed is a cherished part of a kitchen-garden in the Fens. One of the disadvantages of these oozy flats is the lack of good drinking-water. The rivers, filled as they are with the drainings of the dykes and ditches, can only offer water unpleasant both to smell and taste, if not actually poisonous from the decaying matter and the myriad living organisms in it; and springs in the Fens are practically unknown. Under these circumstances the public-houses do a good trade in beer and spirits. XXXI CAMBRIDGESHIRE is a singularly stoneless country, and in the Fens there is not so much as a pebble to be found. Thus it has become a common jest of the Cambridgeshire farmers to offer to swallow all the stones you can pick up in their fields. Farm horses for this reason are never shod, and it sounds not a little strange and uncanny to see one of the great waggon-horses plodding along a Fenland "drove," as the roads are named, and to hear nothing but the sound of his bells and the indistinct thudding of his shoeless feet in the dust or the mud, into whichever condition the weather has thrown the track.