78 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



Besides the Irish, who pass in gangs and generally 

 have a settled destination, many agricultural folk drift 

 along the roads and lanes searching for work. They are 

 sometimes alone, or in couples, or they are a man and 

 his wife, and carry hoes. You can tell them as far as 

 you can see them, for they stop and look over every 

 gateway to note how the crop is progressing, and whether 

 any labour is required. 



On Saturday afternoons, among the crowd of customers 

 at the shops in the towns, under the very shadow of the 

 almost palatial villas of wealthy " City " men, there may 

 be seen women whose dress and talk at once mark them 

 out as agricultural. They have come in on foot from 

 distant farms for a supply of goods, and will return 

 heavily laden. No town-bred woman, however poor, 

 would dress so plainly as these cottage matrons. Their 

 daughters who go with them have caught the finery of 

 the town, and they do not mean to stay in the cottage. 



There is a bleak arable field, on somewhat elevated 

 ground, not very far from the same old barn. In the 

 corner of this field for the last two or three years a great 

 pit of roots has been made : that is, the roots are piled 

 together and covered with straw and earth. When this 

 mound is opened in the early spring a stout, elderly 

 woman takes her seat beside it, billhook in hand, and 

 there she sits the day through trimming the roots one by 

 one, and casting those that she has prepared aside ready 

 to be carted away to the cattle. 



A hurdle or two propped up with stakes, and against 

 which some of the straw from a mound has been thrown, 

 keeps off some of the" wind. But the easterly breezes 

 sweeping over the bare upland must rush round and 

 over that slight bulwark with force but little broken. 

 Holding the root in the left hand, she turns it round 



