London to John O 'Groat's. 241 



word, that neither Englishman, American, French 

 nor German shall be known by his hat, whatever be 

 the form or material of its body or brim. If there 

 were a southern county in England where the mer- 

 cury stood at 100 degrees in the shade for two or three 

 summer months, the upper classes in it would don, 

 without any hesitation, the wide, flappy broadbrims 

 of California, and still be in the fashion, that is, 

 variety in uniformity. The peasantry, or the lowest 

 laboring classes of European countries, are now, and 

 will remain perhaps for a century to come, the only 

 conservators of the distinctive national costumes of 

 bygone generations. 



During the conversation at the table, a farmer 

 exhibited a head of the Hallett wheat, which he had 

 grown on his land. I never saw anything to equal it, 

 in any country in which I have travelled. It was 

 nearly six inches in length, and seeded large and 

 plump from top to bottom. This is a variety pro- 

 duced by Mr. Hallett, of Brighton, and is creating no 

 little interest among English grain-growers. Lord 

 Burghley, who had tested its properties, thus de- 

 scribes it, in a speech before the Northamptonshire 

 Agricultural Society last summer : 



" At the Battersea Show last year, my attention 

 was called to some enormous ears of wheat, which I 



