APRIL 129 



good instrument for brushing pastures, where there is little or no 

 moss to be dealt with, can be made by twining thorns into the 

 bars of an ordinary lift-gate, weighting it with a log, and using it as 

 a drag. 



April 5. Last Saturday, the 2nd, we had another frost, 

 followed by a fine day. Sunday was cold and cloudy ; Monday also 

 cold with sunshine and a high wind, west and nor'-west ; to-day 

 also cold, wind east to south, with intervals of sunshine. The 

 work is the same as that of last week : grass harrowing, manure- 

 spreading, and baulk-splitting, not very interesting operations, any 

 of them, but absolutely necessary. Compared with other and 

 rougher countries, it is curious to note the ceaseless nature of the 

 work needful to the carrying on of an English farm. Although it is 

 the fashion among people who know nothing about him to hold up 

 the English agriculturist as the commonest of fools, he has brought 

 cultivation to such a pitch of science that every day demands its ap- 

 propriate and necessary labour, without which all would be spoilt. 

 Yet the pity of it is that, notwithstanding the care, knowledge, and 

 intelligence which are put into the working of the land, under 

 present conditions it can scarcely be made to pay. The machinery 

 works, the mill goes round ; the labourers, those who are left of them, 

 earn their wage, such as it is, and the beast his provender ; the 

 goodman rises early and rests late, taking thought for the day and 

 the morrow, but when at Michaelmas he balances his books there 

 is no return, and lo ! the bailiff is glaring through the gates. 

 Although there have been gleams of hope during the past year, in 

 our parts the ancient industry of agriculture is nearly moribund, 

 and if the land, or the poorer and therefore the more considerable 

 portion of it, is farmed fairly, it is in many instances being worked 

 at a loss, or at any rate without a living profit. 



The reader may say that this is impossible, that no one would 

 carry on the business under these conditions ; yet it is still 

 carried on, very often from sheer force of habit, or because those 

 who practise it have nothing else to which to turn. The small 



K 



