202 CHRONIC LES OF A CLAY FARM. 



BANSOME, HOWAED, or CEOSSKILL than ever 

 spade or rake produced, or the most careful-handed 

 gardener chopped up, to pot his plants with. The 

 very rabbit that scratches his hole in the ground, or 

 the fox that scratches after him, like a king-crab, to 

 eat the kernel and lie in the shell, or the dog that 

 scratches after both, the whole tribe of ( claw-foot ' 

 in fact, had scratched hard earth into soft mould 

 before ever the plough or the spade, or even the more 

 ancient Hoe, had broken ground on this planet. 



Let us begin from the beginning : let us take 

 * Cultivation ' itself into thought for a serious mo- 

 ment, and analyze it into its simplest elements, 

 dropping all conventionalities of plodding custom. 

 What is it? How would you do it, if you had 

 neither plough nor spade nor hoe nor rake to help 

 you ? Surely with the same tool that the Monks 

 of La Trappe use to dig their graves, and in the 

 same manner ! If the mole, the rabbit, the fox, the 

 dog, are not sufficient indicators, take the hand of 

 man, glove it with hardened steel, multiply it a 

 dozen or twenty times, till you have an instrument 

 as broad as CEOSSKILL'S clod-crusher, each hand or 

 claw with its separate arm forming the radius from 

 a central shaft, which bristles all around with a forest 



