A SKILLED TRADE 23 



stack-making, thatching, ploughing, shepherd's work, 

 horseman's work, dairy work, all require long practice 

 for perfection, and those who know rural England well 

 may have been tempted to discover in the arts of the 

 agricultural labourer something of an hereditary 

 instinct — ^so surprising are the results of the rule-of- 

 thumb yet accurate craft which has been handed down 

 from generation to generation. A man's life-work 

 must be skilled work more surely than the labour which 

 is learned in a short apprenticeship. 



Here is a tribute to the agricultural labourer by one 

 who has watched and understood : 



" As season succeeds season, one avocation is laid 

 aside for another, and whether it is hoeing gingerly 

 between rows of green springing corn, pulling and 

 clamping roots for winter store, felling timber, bush- 

 harrowing pastures or spreading manure, he is expected 

 to be a past master in each art. Only the shepherd, 

 the stockman, the carpenter, and thatcher are special- 

 ists in their own particular line, and often the ordinary 

 labourer may be called to take his turn at one or other 

 of these avocations of the superior workman. I never 

 watch the building of a barley rick (tied corn is easier), 

 or even the topping-up of a loaded waggon of hay, 

 without marvelling at the precision of form attained 

 by these simple rustics, ignorant of the very alphabet 

 of Euclid. I cannot see them laying open a field for 

 draining, cutting the ditches, adjusting the pipes to the 

 fall of the surface, and covering them with a loose 

 layer of bushes, without pondering upon their absolute 

 innocence of all the laws of hydrostatics. And when it 

 comes to striking furrows across a newly ploughed ten- 

 acre bit, I am fairly lost in amazement at the unerring 

 eye and mathem9,tical precision of g-im which steer the 



