THE NEW FARM 53 



still in preparation, promised maternal comfort. The 

 heavy ewes, munching swedes on the grass outside, 

 showed a tendency to nuzzle towards it, as if foretasting 

 the hour when they should be safely delivered within its 

 shelter. The farm was busy ; and after all, the flourish 

 set on our homely landscape is the life belonging to the 

 place. A good herd of cows, a flock of sheep have at 

 least the value of a clump of trees or a spinney, or a flock 

 of finches. 



The one piece of ugliness on the mechanised farm is 

 the factory, the immense building where, every morning 

 and every evening, some four score of the cows are 

 milked, are most mechanically milked by robot fingers. 

 It has not the picturesque attraction of &quot; the straw- 

 built hut &quot; dear to Pales, nor is the curious machine an 

 aesthetic rival to the milkmaid or milkman, whose gaze 

 becomes (like Athena s) almost ox-like as he lays his 

 cheek to the flanks of the grateful beast. It is clear from 

 the peaceful assembling of the cows for the ceremony 

 that they enjoy the machine as they enjoy the fingers of 

 the milkman. The cleanliness or orderliness and celerity 

 of the work may compare with the oil-fed boiler of a 

 liner that has succeeded to the coal. Yet you feel a 

 pleasure in the survival of the old when the cows are 

 finally left to the tenderer mercies of the milker and 

 &quot; stripped &quot; by hand. The man himself feels the sort 

 of triumph expressed to me by an old mower in a tangled 

 harvest field. &quot; They can t do without me yet,&quot; he 

 said, as he whetted his scythe, and presently laid low the 

 awkward &quot; headlands &quot; and tangled clumps of straw 

 with the rhythmic precision of a true artist. 



Petrol-driven lorries hurry along the deep and narrow 

 roadway laden with the Londoner s next morning milk. 

 The hedges of the roadside are singularly neat examples 



