CHAPTER XXII 



ARABLE LAND 



It is extremely difficult ,to realise the sort of country 

 which our forefathers have made into the England of 

 to-day. 



It is quite unusual to find even a few square yards 

 which have never been ^' huzzed and maazed " with the 

 plough, altered and transformed by scientific and other 

 manures, or grazed and depastured by cattle, sheep, 

 donkeys, horses, and swine. 



England seems to have been a wild woodland of badly 

 grown oak forest, with fern brakes or dense tangled 

 thickets of blackthorn and bramble. On the hills there 

 would be great moors, sometimes with heather 7 feet 

 high. The valleys were broad marshes and fenlands, 

 with occasional patches of alder, birch, and willow, and 

 interrupted by old backwaters and lagoons, which were 

 fringed with graceful thickets of buh'ushes and other 

 reeds. 



The change of a country like this to the '^ awful 

 orderliness " of modern England was no easy matter. 

 Strenuous labour, perhaps continued for several genera- 

 tions, was required before this savage natural land 

 became good arable. 



If in the National Gallery one studies carefully the 

 landscapes painted about 1789 to 18 10, it is at once 

 obvious that the England of that day was not in the 

 least like that of 1909. 



The roads were mere mud. To be ^* stuck in the 

 mud " was no unusual experience for gentlemen's 



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