who came to thatch said to me: "We must have straw from the Lowlands;
this upland straw is no good for thatching." Immediately when I heard
him say this there was added to me ten thousand years. And I know
another place in England, far distant from this, where a man said to me
that if I wished to cross in a winter mist, as I had determined to do,
Cross-Fell, that great summit of the Pennines, I must watch the drift of
the snow, for there was no other guide to one's direction in such
weather. And I remember another man in a little boat in the North Sea,
as we came towards the Foreland, talking to me of the two tides, and
telling me how if one caught the tide all the way up to Long Nose and
then went round it on the end of the flood, one caught a new tide up
London river, and so made two tides in one day. He spoke with the same
pleasure that silly men show when they talk about an accumulation of
money. He felt wealthy and proud from the knowledge, for by this
knowledge he had two tides in one day. Now knowledge of this sort is
older than ten thousand years; and so is the knowledge of how birds fly,
and of how they call, and of how the weather changes with the moon.

Very many things a man might add to the list that I am making. Dew-pans
are older than the language or the religion; and the finding of water
with a stick; and the catching of that smooth animal, the mole; and the
building of flints into mortar, which if one does it in the old way (as
you may see at Pevensey) the work lasts for ever, but if you do it in
any new way it does not last ten years; then there is the knowledge of
planting during the crescent part of the month, but not before the new
moon shows; and there is the influence of the moon on cider, and to a
less extent upon the brewing of ale; and talking of ale, the knowledge
of how ale should be drawn from the brewing just when a man can see his
face without mist upon the surface of the hot brew. And there is the
knowledge of how to bank rivers, which is called "throwing the rives" in