'FALLOWS' AND WHAT FOLLOWS. Gl 



But when two or three or four fields come to be 

 thrown into one, in a district originally close-fenced,, 

 and where great varieties of soil are met with, this 

 deference to the archaeology of the land becomes 

 rather puzzling to indulge and carry out. 



Being bent upon the adoption, as far as possible, of 

 the six-course shift, I had made it one of the occupa- 

 tions of those valuable provisions of nature, the long 

 Winter Evenings, to cut, carve, and contrive, upon 

 the map of my farm, a division of the arable laud 

 into six principal fields. The task was not a very 

 easy one. The inclination of the land being very 

 slight, had to be studied with the greater care; the 

 fences that should remain were not always the best or 

 the straightcst ; and that halfway house of indecision 

 (so well known to all busy travellers on the highway 

 of life), between making a good job at once, on the one 

 side, and economy of labour, on the other, occasioned 

 many a halting hour of doubt, during which Day and 

 Night, Map and Land, alternately gave each other the 

 lie, and took it back again, with that quick reciprocity 

 and alternation, for which halfway houses, real as well 

 as metaphorical, are not uncelebrated in fact and fic- 

 tion. We are told by the oldest of profane historians, 

 that it was the national practice of the ancient Per- 



