254 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



content with a smaller output ; who will not put a 

 hurdle on the stack till it is perfect in each detail. 

 Which is the wiser ? A ready-made answer comes 

 easily to the lips "Why, the man who makes less 

 hurdles, and finishes these to a touch." But I am 

 not so sure. Perfect work for its own sweet sake is 

 an inspiring thing to consider. Yet it is a fine thing, 

 too, for a village worker to place himself and his 

 family beyond danger of the poor-house in the lean 

 years to come, by the strength and quickness of his 

 daily toil ; and the man who can turn out his ten or 

 even twelve workmanlike sheep hurdles in the day is 

 of the sort who do not often come on the rates. 



I am not referring here to lazy or to unskilful 

 hurdlers whose work will hardly stand a season's 

 wear. Unhappily, we find such men working in some 

 copses to-day, though not, I believe, in our own. They 

 served no apprenticeship, they have only been em- 

 ployed to make hurdles because the number of skilled 

 woodworkers in many places grows less and less. In 

 some districts not a wattle hurdle-maker is left to- 

 day ; the old hands are dead or past the work, and 

 the lads do not take kindly to life in the coppice. 

 So the farmer and the wood-dealer must depend on 

 casual hands, whose work would shame the hurdlers 

 of the old school. 



The maker of wattle hurdles in the ash and hazel 

 coppices is not the only wood worthy who is growing 

 scarce in England. There is the man who cuts the 



