84 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FAKM. 



itself. But when two or three or four fields come to be 

 thrown into one, in a district originally close-fenced, 

 and where great varieties of soil are met with, this 

 deference to the archaeology of the land becomes 

 rather puzzling to carry out. 



Being bent upon the adoption, as far as possible, 

 of the six-course shift,* I had made it one of the oc- 

 cupations of those valuable provisions of nature, 

 the long "Winter Evenings, to cut, carve, and con- 

 trive, upon the map of my farm, a division of the 

 arable land into six principal fields. The task was 

 not a very easy one. The inclination of the land 

 being very slight, had to be studied with the greater 

 care ; the fences that should remain were not always 

 the best or the straightest ; and that halfway house 

 of indecision (so well known to all busy travelers on 

 the highway of life,) between making a good job at 

 once, on the one side, and economy of labor on the 

 other, occasioned many a halting hour of doubt, 

 during which Day and Night, Map and Land, alter- 

 nately gave each other the lie, and took it back 

 again, with that quick reciprocity and alternation, 



* That is to say, a succession of crops, as turnips, wheat, 

 barley, oats, grass, beans, or such other different crops as will 

 best succeed each other, according to the approved systems 

 of British husbandry. ED. 



