A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 127 



run round the fields, and the sealer or tossing-machine 

 follows. The third day, or even the second, if the 

 crop is light, the hay is raked roughly into lines with 

 the horse-rake and carried from the lines. Being 

 thus about half-cured, it is stacked (wide and low, to 

 save pitching up), and left to sweat and smoke and 

 possibly fire. In perfect hay-weather this plan is just 

 feasible, though a vile piece of scamp-work ; in most 

 seasons it is calamitous. The scarcity of mowing- 

 machines delays the cutting ; a day's rain saturates 

 the uncocked grass ; and the hasty, careless operation 

 breaks down, ending in a rick of grey, washed-out 

 provender, not without its due effects in the ultimate 

 eating. The tearing cut of the knives in the machine 

 is a very different thing from the clean rip of the 

 scythe ; and the older men are positive that where 

 machines are regularly used, the bottom surely 

 deteriorates. 



When my meadows are ready, with due, but no 

 excessive observance of the weather, I put in some 

 half-dozen scythes, retained beforehand : Bish, who 

 is a slow but very steady mower ; Lemuel Welfare, 

 a terrible Radical, who does nothing all the year 

 till hay-time, then works superbly and drinks in 

 proportion; Henry Awcock (which we call Awk), 

 the Rectory coachman, lent for the business, a 



