60 A Walk from 



The sound of the flail is dying out of the land, and 

 soon will be heard no more. Even threshing machines 

 worked by horses are being discarded, as too slow and 

 old-fashioned. Locomotive steam engines, on broad- 

 rimmed wheels, may be met on the turnpike road, tra- 

 velling on their own legs from farm to farm to thresh 

 out wheat, barley, oats, and beans, for a few pence per 

 bushel. They make nothing of ascending a hill without 

 help, or of walking across a ploughed field to a rick- 

 yard. Iron post and rail fencing, in lengths of twenty 

 feet on wheels, drawn about by a donkey, bids fair to 

 supersede the old wooden hurdles for sheep fed on 

 turnips or clover. It is an iron age, and wire fencing 

 is creeping into use, especially in the most scientifically 

 cultivated districts of Scotland, where the elements and 

 issues of the farmer's balance-sheet are looked to with 

 the most eager concern. Iron wire grows faster than 

 hawthorn or buckthorn. It doubtless costs less. It 

 needs no yearly trimming, like shrubs with sap and 

 leaves. It does not occupy a furrow's width as a boun- 

 dary between two fields. It may be easily transposed 

 to vary enclosures. It is not a nesting place for de- 

 structive birds or vermin. These and other arguments, 

 of the same utilitarian genus, are making perceptible 

 headway. Will they ever carry the day against the 

 green hedges ? I think they would, very soon, if the 



