resembling a fish-scale. The same form with a small square shoulder is
very generally used, but there is a great variety, and sometimes those
with ornamental ends are blended with plain ones. Age imparts a very
beautiful colour to old tiles, and when covered with lichen they
assume a charming appearance which artists love to depict.

The mortar used in these old buildings is very strong and good. In
order to strengthen the mortar used in Sussex and Surrey houses and
elsewhere, the process of "galleting" or "garreting" was adopted. The
brick-layers used to decorate the rather wide and uneven mortar joint
with small pieces of black ironstone stuck into the mortar. Sussex was
once famous for its ironwork, and ironstone is found in plenty near
the surface of the ground in this district. "Galleting" dates back to
Jacobean times, and is not to be found in sixteenth-century work.

Sussex houses are usually whitewashed and have thatched roofs, except
when Horsham slates or tiles are used. Thatch as a roofing material
will soon have altogether vanished with other features of vanishing
England. District councils in their by-laws usually insert regulations
prohibiting thatch to be used for roofing. This is one of the
mysteries of the legislation of district councils. Rules, suitable
enough for towns, are applied to the country villages, where they are
altogether unsuitable or unnecessary. The danger of fire makes it
inadvisable to have thatched roofs in towns, or even in some villages
where the houses are close together, but that does not apply to
isolated cottages in the country. The district councils do not compel
the removal of thatch, but prohibit new cottages from being roofed
with that material. There is, however, another cause for the
disappearance of thatched roofs, which form such a beautiful feature
in the English landscape. Since mowing-machines came into general use