140 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



green leaf. The labouring men used to tell me how 

 they went reaping, for although you may see what is 

 called reaping still going on at harvest-time, it is not 

 reaping. True reaping is done with a hook alone and 

 the hand ; all the present reaping is * vagging,' with a 

 hook in one hand and a bent stick in the other, and 

 instead of drawing the hook towards him and cutting it, 

 the reaper chops at the straw as he might at an enemy. 

 Then came the reaping machines, that simply cut the 

 wheat, and left it lying flat on the ground, which were 

 constantly altered and improved. Now there are the 

 wire and string binders, that not only cut the corn, but 

 gather it together and bind it in sheaves — a vast saving 

 in labour. Still the reaping-hook endures and is used 

 on all small farms, and to some extent on large ones, to 

 round off the work of the machine ; the new things 

 come, but the old still remains*. In itself the reaping- 

 hook is an enlarged sickle, and the sickle was in use in 

 Roman times, and no man knows how long before that. 

 With it the reaper cut off the ears of the wheat only, 

 leaving the tall straw standing, much as if it had been 

 a pruning-knife. It is the oldest of old implements — 

 very likely it was made of a chip of flint at first, and 

 then of bronze, and then of steel, and now at Sheffield 

 or Birmingham in its enlarged form of the ■ vagging ' 

 hook. In the hand of Ceres it was the very symbol of 

 agriculture, and that was a goodly time ago. At this 

 hour they say the sickle is still used in several parts of 

 England where the object is more to get the straw than 

 the ear. 



On the broad page of some ancient illuminated 

 manuscript, centuries old, you may see the churl, or 

 farmer's man, knocking away with his flail at the grain 

 on the threshing-floor. The knock knocking of the 



