652 LABOUR AND WAGES. 



be true, especially at the sucker. There are several entries of 

 the price paid for this work by the foot. During the first ten 

 years I id. was paid, then to the end of the low-priced period 

 is., except in one year, 1626, when New College got a tree 

 bored to the length of 35 feet at yd. In 1646 Eton pays 

 is. id. In course of time the leaden pipe supersedes the 

 wooden. The metal pumps were more durable and more 

 manageable. I have commented on these pipes under the 

 table of Sundries. In 1635 the labour of the pump-mender is 

 paid at is. $d. a day. 



Another kind of agricultural labour constantly paid by the 

 piece is hedging, ditching, or hedging and ditching by the 

 pole or rod of i6| feet. Our forefathers were quite alive to 

 the expediency of efficient drainage. They trenched their 

 land and filled their trenches with stone, they adopted a 

 system of ridge and furrow in cultivation, and they did their 

 best to convey superfluous moisture into ditches. It is pro- 

 bable that some of the most permanent agricultural operations 

 in existence are the ditches round fields, which in all likelihood 

 are often as old as English agriculture. 



The cost of hedging, ditching, or doing both, by the rod, 

 varied with the state of the ditch. The assessments define 

 the dimensions and depth of the ditch, but rarely venture on 

 fixing the price of the labour. Nearly all my entries are 

 plainly of old hedges and ditches, which the workman had to 

 trim, in order to keep them close, and to cleanse, in order to 

 secure their efficiency. In the agriculture of the seventeenth 

 century, hedging and ditching seems to have been done by 

 the occupier, and my entries, when they are not of farming 

 operations, are of owners who were also occupiers. 



The difference between the cost of cleansing or making good 

 an old and of making a new ditch are well illustrated by the 

 entry from Eton in 1677. Hedging, ditching, and fencing old 

 ditches of 282 poles in length is done at 6d. a pole, which is 

 rather below the ordinary price of the time. But making a 

 new ditch costs five times as much by the pole. After har- 



