162 JUNE 



altered much. Agricultural chemists now tell us that 

 leaf and blade make a sweeter and more nutritious morsel 

 than the stem and flower ; and the new knowledge urges 

 the world to an earlier and a yet earlier haysel. The 

 sweetest hay that ever I smelt was cut on a golf links when 

 only three or four inches high, and dried artificially. It 

 kept its greenness to the end, and from first to last smelt 

 as sweetly as a bunch of pinks. The horses neighed for 

 it and the cows preferred it to cake. So nowadays the 

 hay-harvest precedes the strawberry in many places, 

 though there are farms in Herefordshire, most lovely and 

 traditional of counties, where the moment for cutting is 

 still decided by the flowering of the rhododendrons. 



The new harvest is a different picture from the old, 

 but not perhaps less of a picture. You seldom see the 

 old &quot; bobbery pack &quot; of men, boys, and maids tossing 

 and turning and piling in rows the heavy grass swathes. 

 The circulation of pitchforks, those traditional weapons 

 of the labourer, has fallen lamentably along with the 

 scythe, the traditional weapon of Time, and the sickle, 

 which has been taken by a strange anachronism as one 

 of the symbols of Labour. To mow with a scythe is a 

 satisfying art, practised only in small paddocks or can 

 tankerous corners ; and you have to search for your 

 expert. But there remain a few masters of the swaying 

 rhythm, instinctively obeying the book rules to keep 

 their hands low, and take the blade &quot; back with the left 

 and stroke it through with the right,&quot; just as Mr. Bobby 

 Jones advises for the happy golf-player. They cut a level 

 swathe and leave a close nap. You hear the pleasant 

 swish repeated t like a chaffinch s refrain, and wait ex 

 pectantly for the crisp whetting of the blade with a 

 tapered hone at every tenth swathe. The track of wheels 

 or railway metals is not straighter than the double line 



