10 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



Has it ever been tried with a Spirit-level ? 



Now this was not a fair question. Spirit-levels 

 (if they had any meaning or existence at all) were 

 unintelligible mathematical-looking instruments of 

 purely professional nature, only seen (if ever) in the 

 hands of road-surveyors' assistants, and people of 

 that sort. They had nothing whatever to do with 

 farming. The question was unfair : it contained an 

 ambiguous term. 



Picture to yourself, however, the following con- 

 clusion from it. A bleak, foggy November day: 

 a long rambling space, marsh or meadow, as you 

 might choose to call it, of some twenty acres in 

 extent, and about the third part of a mile in length, 

 with a narrow, thick plantation of rushes, sedges, 

 and brooklime, and such aquatic vegetation, thread- 

 ing its way in one long dank line from end to end, 

 by such fantastic wanderings, that it looked as if 

 the hidden channel of choked moisture it concealed 

 had been making a continued series of experiments 

 from time out of mind in search of an outlet ; and, 

 after centuries of struggle and disappointment, had 

 at length arrived, quite by accident, at a certain point 

 of the meadow, where you might see a pair of high 

 mud-boots standing, or rather soaking, with a man 

 in them, peering through a telescope on three legs, 



