My Visitors 143 



elaborately " informed," were not even aware that 

 a highly fertile soil was necessarily rich in the 

 particular agents which would kill an acid 

 organism like heather from the day it was planted 

 among them ; but the stuff was good enough for 

 the " information " of Radical M.P.s. A strange 

 fact that, in spite of their intimate association with 

 the expert, they were completely ignorant of the 

 truth about the agricultural things to be seen on 

 my little farm, and this is how the politicians 

 make the Department so useless to the farmers. 



At the time of his visit, we were building, and 

 doing little or nothing else. Old buildings had 

 been pulled down. The debris lay about in heaps. 

 Foundations for new buildings were getting carted 

 out, and there were large piles of stones collected 

 for masonry. Add rainy weather, and the place 

 could indeed be " dirty." In this part of the 

 description, the expert would be telling no more 

 than the honest truth, and then, what if he should 

 have honestly mistaken the architectural for 

 agricultural operations ? One of the workmen 

 might have told him that the stones were turnips, 

 that the mortar was farm-yard dung, that the sow 

 in the yard was a new kind of horse specially bred 

 to cart building material ; and in my absence, he 

 would be bound, as an official expert and as a 

 gentleman, to take the word of the intelligent 

 workman for any information he might ask. 

 Having come to learn, he must ask questions, 

 while the workmen were free to tell him anything 

 they liked, and the more likely to temper instruc- 



