NOVEMBER. 375 



side. In some districts, the men mend their 

 own clothes and shoes ; in others, various re- 

 pairs of smaller implements, as flails, sieves, etc. 

 are done ; and it is now become a laudable cus- 

 tom in many superior farms, to encourage read- 

 ing and other means of mental improvement, 

 which the continual engagements of a rural 

 labourer preclude during the summer. The 

 promotion of this spirit is highly to be de- 

 sired ; no part of our working population hav- 

 ing been so lamentably deficient in common 

 knowledge as that of farmers' servants. Through 

 the summer they have toiled from morning till 

 night, and from day to day incessantly, and 

 their only intervals of rest, Sundays and winter 

 nights, have been lost in drowsiness. The cot- 

 tager may usefully, by his winter fire, construct 

 bee-hives, nets, mole-traps, bird-cages, etc.; 

 with any of these employments I have more 

 sympathy than with the last, however. 



Of all men who pursue rural occupations, 

 the bird-catchers, especially the summer bird- 

 catchers, they who do not capture birds when 

 they have congregated in winter, when they 

 have no mates or young ones to feel the effects 

 of their loss, and are ready for the table of the 



