286 A FARMER'S YEAR 



believe that there are many instances upon record of things l)cing 

 so nicely timed that the harvest is finished on the evening of the 

 last day of the appointed month. 



At the farmhouse of a iieiL,hbour this afternoon I saw two 

 little boys, who told me that tliey are the sons of a pastry-cook in 

 the neighbourhood of the Edgware Road. They are two of about 

 a dozen children which have been sent by some charity to be 

 boarded out for a fortnight in the village at a price of 5^. a week 

 per head. I can imagine no truer kindness than that of those 

 good people who thus enable these poor city-bred children to 

 enjoy a fortnight of pure country air, to the great benefit of their 

 minds and bodies. I hope that this work may prosper and increase, 

 as there is unlimited room for the accommodation of such children, 

 and many respectable village women would be only too glad to 

 take them in and feed them well for 5^-. a week. 



July 25. — This afternoon, in walking over the Thwaite field, 

 No. 28, to look at the carrots and young swedes, which are suffer- 

 ing from drought, I saw a curious thing. Over the field, skimming 

 here, there, and everywhere in the air, but within an area of a 

 well defined circuit, were two or three hundreds of swallows and 

 martins, all of them busy in the ceaseless consumption of some 

 invisible insects. I suppose that the ' fly ' was in the air, and 

 that this was a ' rise ' of swallows collected to take advantage of 

 it. As they were hawking within so limited a space, it would seem 

 to show that these myriads of tiny insects on which they feed pass 

 from place to place in swarms. 



July 31. — On Wednesday we began carting the hay from 

 Baker's Marsh, No. 46. It is a very good crop, a ton and a half 

 an acre, I should say. I believe that shutting this field down so 

 late has, in fact, improved the turf, as it gave the fine grasses time 

 to get up before they were overshadowed by the coarser-growing 

 sorts. Before we began to cart some of the men were employed 

 fixing the galvanized iron roofs on to two of the haystacks in the 



