102 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



century, as in the dim ages before the Pyramids, upon 

 this tiny yellow grain here, rubbed out from the ear 

 of wheat. The clever mechanism of the locomotive 

 which bears him to and fro, week after week and 

 month after month, from home to office and from 

 office home, has not rendered him in the least degree 

 independent of this. 



But it is no wonder that these things are forgotten 

 in the daily struggle of London. And if the merchant 

 spares an abstracted glance from the morning or 

 evening newspaper out upon the fields from the 

 carriage window, the furrows of the field can have 

 but little meaning. Each looks to him exactly alike. 

 To the farmers and the labourer such and such a 

 furrow marks an acre and has its bearing, but to 

 the passing glance it is not so. The work in the 

 field is so slow; the passenger by rail sees, as 

 it seems to him, nothing going on ; the corn may 

 sow itself almost for all that is noteworthy in ap- 

 parent labour. 



Thus it happens that, although the cornfields and 

 the meadows come so closely up to the offices and 

 warehouses of mighty London, there is a line and 

 mark in the minds of men between them ; the man 

 of merchandise does not see what the man of the 

 field sees, though both may pass the same acres 

 every morning. It is inevitable that it should be so. 

 It is easy in London to forget that it is midsummer, 

 till, going some day into Covent-garden Market, you 

 see baskets of the cornflower, or blue-bottle as it is 

 called in the country, ticketed " Corinne," and offered 

 for sale. The lovely azure of the flower recalls the 



