XIX. 



THE 'POWERS' THAT BE. 



THE concluding words of the conversation which 

 had taken place between my worthy guest and my- 

 self over the breakfast table, gave us both an inclina- 

 tion to go and look at the ploughing. A Wheat 

 stubble which had just been 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 con- 

 tinual 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 par- 

 ticles of soil with the surface water that ran down 

 them. I used never to look at it without asking 

 myself * How many hundred years has this been gc- 

 ing on ? and what must be the amount of deteriora- 

 tion of texture (to say nothing of loss of manure), 



