208 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



and is inserted here to show the great beauty given by the 

 creeper to that part of the house which it has grown upon, 

 contrasted, as it is, with the bare wall of the modern addition. 

 The vine, in this case, is our Virginian creeper (ampclopsis 

 quinquefolia, the common five-leaved vine of our fences not 

 the poison ity)- a very beautiful plant certainly, and growing 

 more rapidly than the European ivy, but having this im 

 measurable disadvantage, that it is not evergreen. 



The day after I reached here, my host had occasion to go 

 to a horse-fair at Welsh Pool, a place some twenty miles dis 

 tant, and invited me to accompany him. We went in a dog 

 cart, a kind of heavy gig, which here takes the place of our 

 light boat-wagon. It is a box (large enough to hold a dog 

 or two in driving to sporting ground), hung low, between two 

 small, heavy wheels, with a seat on the top of it for two, look 

 ing forward, and sometimes another in which two more can 

 sit looking backward. On the back, to exempt it from the 

 tax upon more luxurious vehicles, is painted the owner s name, 

 business, and place of residence, thus: &quot;John Brown, Farmer, 

 Owestry, Shrops.&quot; All the humbler class of carriages are 

 thus marked here, including farm carts. 



The landscapes were agreeable in the country we passed 

 through, but the farming in much of it no better than in some 

 parts of the Connecticut valley. Coarse, rushy grass, indi 

 cating the need of draining, grew in much of the meadow 

 land, as I think it does to the exclusion of more valuable 

 grasses in land that is ordinarily dryer than such as would 

 spontaneously produce it in America. The buildings along 

 the road were such as I have previously described ; but I saw 

 one old shackling board barn which, but for its thatched roof, 

 would have looked very home-like. 



Welsh Pool is a small compact town (population 5,000) 

 with a market-house, and a single small church, on the towei 



