WALK IN RURAL ENGLAND. 9 



clever boys from school at the age of thirteen 

 for the sake of the extra shillhig or two added 

 to the meagre family purse. This by law, 

 unfortunately, they are allowed to do, if the 

 boys are set to work on the farms. The 

 smarter boys, however, soon quit rather than 

 face the life of ill-paid drudgery that lies in 

 front of them, leaving only the dolts behind. 

 And so the land is deprived of brain-stuff, is 

 starved of labour, and denuded of capital ; and 

 where it does not actually go back in fertility, 

 it merely marks time. This is the natural 

 sequence to our slipshod policy of laissez-faire 

 applied to the land. 



On one side of this valley, which runs from 

 Inkpen Beacon to Hurstbourne Tarrant, are 

 fields given over to the thistle, the wild carrot, 

 and the burdock, forming one vast rabbit- 

 warren. One could see that the plough had 

 at one time been at work here. I saw fields 

 like this near Whitmay, where I hid in the 

 long grass with my camera in order to photo- 

 graph the countryside around me running to 

 waste, whilst a company of sportsmen passed 

 by in the next field. 



The irony of the waste fields of Coombe is 

 brought home to us with a greater force when 



