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 COMBINATION AND COMMINUTION. 49 



laughter not at my own words, but at the effect 

 I knew they were producing and walked away. 

 I turned once only, and saw him leaning on his 

 spade, and looking after me. 1 can give you his 

 soliloquy, for it was written upon his attitude, like 

 the lettering of a picture. 



"Well! If that don't beat every thing!" 

 A blessed thing, in its way, I say again, is the 

 untamed boldness of youth. There was not a full- 

 grown " practical farmer " within a ten-mile circuit 

 of the spot where the old drainer stood on that 

 day, wrapt in severe amazement, who would not 

 have thought it as much as his fair fame was 

 worth to give that order. Nothing but the incon- 

 ceivable daring of pure, unmitigated THEORY would 

 have ventured its character upon such a throw. 

 Now for the explanation. 



Upon all wet, thin, cold clay soils, the wisdom 

 of antiquity has long established that you are 

 only to plough three or four inches deep ; that you 

 are to ridge up your lands into a certain round- 

 packed shape, from which the rain may run off, as 

 it would from an umbrella, or the roof of a house ; 

 that you are never to cross-plough, or otherwise 

 disturb this consecrated form into which the earth's 



surface has been once-for-all moulded, but to keep 

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