JULY 277 



but of late years they have been in great demand for sawing into 

 dust, which is, I understand, used in the making of wood 

 powders. 



July 18. St. Swithun has not disappointed us. This is a 

 splendid hay day, hot, with a high west wind. The cutter and 

 tosser are busy on No. 19, but the grass there is not so thick or 

 so good as it was last year. These marshes always do best in 

 a dry season ; but this has been wet enough to bring out the water 

 over them, which, if it stands for more than a few hours, turns 

 the foot of the grasses brown and rots them, so that in places 

 they come coarse and scanty. The only herb that the floods 

 do not affect are the docks, which grow here with frightful 

 vigour, and have roots like carrots. The presence of so many 

 hundreds of these poisonous weeds standing above the level of 

 the grass like young and particularly flourishing trees, each of 

 them laden with thousands upon thousands of ripening seeds, 

 is to me a most distressing sight, but as yet we have found 

 it quite impossible to attempt to get rid of them. Indeed, 

 this can only be done if the marsh is fed, and ever since I 

 have had it in hand it has been mown, when the docks are 

 collected out of the hay into heaps and burnt. The other day 

 I found a dock growing on a manure heap, whither it had been 

 brought among the mud fyed out of a marsh dyke. That 

 plant was over seven feet high. I also discovered that there 

 exists a living creature that will eat docks, for in the root of 

 one which I pulled up I found a white, fat, and most unwhole- 

 some-looking grub, which had gnawed a deep channel all down 

 its length, without, however, in the slightest degree affecting 

 its general health. 



The hay off this marsh has a curious quality. Although in wet 

 seasons it is coarse and reedy-looking, and therefore would fetch 

 but a moderate price at market, even when it has been saved in 

 bad condition, after being washed with floods and rain, stock will 

 eat it in preference to the best upland hay. Hood tells me that 



