58 Wild Life in a Southern County 



These strips are made into ladies' workbaskets and endless 

 knick-knacks. The flexibility of the willow is surprising 

 when reduced to these narrow pieces, scarcely thicker than 

 stout paper. This industry used to keep many hands 

 employed. There were willow-looms in the village, and 

 to show their dexterity the weavers sometimes made a 

 shirt of willow of course only as a curiosity. The de- 

 velopment of straw weaving greatly interfered with this 

 business ; and now it is followed by a few only, who are 

 chiefly engaged in preparing the raw material to go else- 

 where. 



From the ash woods on the slopes and the copses of 

 the fields large ash-poles are brought, which one or two 

 old men in the place spend their time splitting up for 

 ' flakes ' a c flake ' being a frame of light wood, 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 in- 

 dustry ; 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 waggon 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, &c., and his yard is 

 strewn with timber. There is generally a mason, who goes 

 about from farm to farm mending 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 agri- 

 culture uses three times as much machinery and ironwork 

 as was formerly the case. At first the blacksmiths did 



