84 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



The farmers find it an expensive crop. It costs 50/. or 

 60/. to pick a very small garden, and if the Egyptian 

 plague of insects has prevailed the pice at market will 

 not repay the expenditure. The people talk much of a 

 possible duty on foreign hops. The hop farmer should 

 have a lady-bird on his seal ring for his sign and token, 

 for the lady-bird is his great friend. Lady-birds (and 

 their larvae) destroy myriads of the aphides which cause 

 rust, and a flight of lady-birds should be welcomed as 

 much as a flight of locusts is execrated in other coun- 

 tries. 



II. 



One of the hop-picking women told me how she went 

 to church and the parson preached such a curious 

 sermon, all about our ■ innerds ' (inwards, insides), and 

 how many ' boanes ' we had, and by-and-by ' he told us 

 that we were the only beasts who had the use of our 

 hands.' Years since at village schools the girls used to 

 swallow pins ; first one would do it, then another, 

 presently half the school were taking pins. Ignorant of 

 physiology ! Yet they did not seem to suffer ; the pins 

 did not penetrate the pleura or lodge in the processes. 

 Now Anatomy climbs into the pulpit and shakes a 

 bony fist at the congregation. That is the humerus of 

 it, as Corporal Nym might say. At the late election — 

 the cow election —the candidates were Brown, Conser- 

 vative, and Stiggins, Liberal. The day after the polling 

 a farm labourer was asked how he filled up his voting 

 paper. ' Oh/ said he full of the promised cow, ■ I doan't 



