COMBINATION AND COMMINUTION. 29 



words, but at the effect I knew they were producing ; 

 and walked away. I turned once only, and saw him 

 leaning on his spade, and looking after me. I can 

 give you his soliloquy, for it was written upon his 

 attitude, like the lettering of a picture. 

 < Well ! If that don't beat everything !' 

 A blessed thing, in its way, I say again, is the un- 

 tamed boldness of youth. There was not a full-grown 

 ' practical farmer ' within a ten mile circuit of the 

 spot where the old drainer stood on that day, wrapt 

 in severe amazement, who would not have thought it 

 as much as his fair fame was worth to give that order. 

 Nothing but the inconceivable daring of pure unmiti- 

 gated THEORY would have ventured its character upon 

 such a throw. Now for the explanation. 



Upon all wet thin cold clay soils, the wisdom of 

 antiquity has long established that you are only to 

 plough three or four inches deep; that you are to 

 ridge up your lands into a certain round-backed 

 shape which the rain may run off, as it would from 

 an umbrella, or the roof of a house ; that you are 

 never to cross-plough, or otherwise disturb this con- 

 secrated form into which the earth's surface has been 

 once-for-all moulded, but to keep scratching it, up 

 and down, shallow enough to insure a seed-time by 



