XIX. 



THE POWERS ' THAT BE. 



THE concluding words of the conversation which had 

 taken place between my worthy guest and myself 

 over the breakfast table, gave us both an inclination 

 to go and look at the ploughing. A Wheat stubble 

 which had been just drained was being broken up for 

 the next year's Turnip fallow. It was a stiff and 

 rather thin soil, which had, to my long remembrance, 

 been year after year suffering a continual loss, of that 

 kind denoted by a deposit of fine sand at the bottom 

 of each furrow, against the lower headland, from the 

 silting away of the lighter particles of soil with the 

 surface water that ran down them. I used never to 

 look at it without asking myself ' How many hun- 

 dred years has this been going on ? and what must 

 be the amount of deterioration of texture (to say no- 

 thing of loss of manure), which this field has suffered 

 in the aggregate ? Query Would it be as stiff a soil 



M 



