ON LANDSLIPS. 305 



holes themselves would greatly weaken the foot of the slip 

 while they were still open, — I only had the alternate holes 

 dug first, intending to put down the intermediate ones after- 

 wards, so as not to weaken the slip too much at one time. 

 Thus the first set of holes put down were six feet square and 

 twenty-four feet apart from centre to centre. 



By the time these holes were down, I had a train of 

 wagons full of stone on the bank, and men ready to chuck 

 the stone in at once, for we had plenty of men and of 

 wagons ; thus the holes were filled simultaneously. But in 

 digging the holes a novel plan was adopted to save time. 

 Though the stuff was a nice grafting clay, yet a grafting tool 

 is very heavy, and a navvy can only cast his graft to the 

 height of his shoulder, about five feet say; so to get down 

 12 feet he would have had to fix two stages on which to cast 

 ihe grafts, and the process would be too slow. I therefore 

 organized a new plan of working. I put one stout navvy with 

 his grafting tool into each hole, and a young active country- 

 man with him with a short-handled pitchfork. The navvy 

 had only to turn the grafts over ; then the countryman stuck 

 in his pitchfork (which is a comparatively light tool), and 

 flung the clod over his left shoulder ; and this they were able 

 to do comfortably from the bottom of the hole, the navvy 

 taking rather lighter grafts when the hole was deep. The 

 work thus went on with remarkable speed ; for the navvy 

 had only to turn the grafts over, and the man with the 

 pitchfork to fling them out as quickly as the other grafted 

 them; for the lumps of clay slipped from the fork beautifully, 

 and the men were quite pleased with the arrangement. For 

 fear of the clay sides of the holes falling in, I had some three- 

 inch planks ready, cut to the lengths in sets of four, two 6 

 feet long, and two 5 feet 6 inches. About five feet down the 

 longer planks were placed against the back and front of the 



