8o WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



used after the manner of a hurdle to stop a gap, or 

 pitched in a row to part a field into two. Hurdle- 

 making is another industry ; but of late years hurdles 

 have been made on a large scale by master carpenters 

 in the market-towns, who employ several men, and 

 undersell the village maker. 



The wheelwright is perhaps the busiest man in the 

 place : he not only makes and mends wagon and 

 cart wheels, and the body of those vehicles, but does 

 almost every other kind of carpentering. Sometimes 

 he combines the trade of a builder with it if he has a 

 little capital and puts up cottages, barns, sheds, etc., 

 and his yard is strewn with timber. There is gener- 

 ally a mason, who goes about from farm to farm mend- 

 ing walls and pigsties, and all such odd jobs, working 

 for his own hand. 



The blacksmith, of course, is there sometimes more 

 than one usually with plenty to do ; for modern 

 agriculture uses three times as much machinery and 

 ironwork as was formerly the case. At first the black- 

 smiths did not understand how to mend many of these 

 new-fangled machines, but they have learned a good 

 deal, though some of the pieces still have to be re- 

 placed from the implement factories if broken. Horses 

 come trooping in to have new shoes put on. Some- 

 times a village blacksmith acquires a fame for shoeing 

 horses which extends far beyond his forge, and gentle- 

 men residing in the market-towns send out their horses 

 to him to be shod. He still uses a ground-ash sapling 

 to hold the short chisel with which he cuts off the glow- 



