XIX. 



THE "POWERS" THAT BE. 



THE concluding words of the conversation which 

 had taken place between my worthy guest and 

 myself over the breakfast table, gave us both an 

 inclination to go and look at the plowing. A 

 Wheat stubble which had been just drained was 

 being broken up for the next year's Turnip fallow. 

 It was a stiff and rather thin soil, which had, to my 

 long remembrance, been year after year suffering a 

 continual loss, of that kind denoted by a deposit of 

 fine sand at the bottom of each furrow, against the 

 lower headland, from the silting away of the lighter 

 particles of soil with the surface-water that ran 

 down them. I used never to look at it without 

 asking myself "How many hundred years has this 

 been going on? and what must be the amount of 

 deterioration of texture (to say nothing of loss of ma- 

 nure) which this field has suffered in the aggregate? 



