AUGUST 313 



I believe, divided among all concerned, upon some fixed system, 

 but what it is I do not know. 



Here is a story of a gentleman who knows about everything 

 in the world except the art and practice of agriculture, who accom- 

 panied me to Bedingham yesterday. Scene : a beet field, and by 

 the gate a patch of tiny white turnips recently drilled upon the site 

 of the last year's root-clamp, or 'hale,' where swedes had been 

 stored and earthed over. 



' Why are these so much smaller than those ? ' asked my 

 friend, pointing first to the patch of little turnips and next to the 

 tall beet in contact with and surrounding them. 



' Because of the hale,' I answered. 



' Indeed ! ' he said, ' that is most interesting. Do you know, 

 I had no idea that hailstorms were ever so strictly local and so 

 limited in their destructive effect. Look, the line might have 

 been cut with a knife/ 



After all, though we laughed at it, his mistake was natural, 

 for ' hale ' and ' hail ' are pronounced the same, and he had never 

 heard the former term, which is, I think, peculiar to these parts. 



Coming home through the orchard from church about eight 

 o'clock last evening, I stayed a while in the Buildings stackyard, 

 to watch a great white owl hawking silently in the twilight. By 

 day and by night life seems to be a very solemn thing to an owl ; 

 but perhaps who knows ? he is really a merry bird. Presently, 

 grey and ghostlike, he glided close to my head, for in the shadow 

 of the tall paled gate I think that I was invisible to him. Then he 

 turned, and rising to clear the haystack, saw, I suppose, a mouse 

 running about upon the thatch. At any rate, he swooped, striking 

 the roof of the stack with a heavy bump. But the mouse had been 

 too quick for him, so, recovering himself, that owl departed in dis- 

 gust, and a minute later I heard his melancholy note far away 

 across the lawn. 



This morning the machine was cutting wheat on the top por- 

 tion of the pit-hole field, No. 23. Here the sparrows have done 

 great damage ; indeed quite enough grain for a seeding is lying 



