HAYSEL AND HAYSTACK 163 



of the mower s feet, as he moves by inches forward to his 

 labour s end. 



Let us praise the past but not deny the glories of the 

 present. Romance brings up the hay-sweep and elevator. 

 Though harvest is early, it does not altogether anticipate 

 the seeding of the spring fescues. In this strangely fertile 

 year, when the grasses are as heavy a crop as the apples, 

 the foxtails are seen to resemble a fox s brush, not only in 

 shape, but it is the first time I noticed it in colour 

 too. Doubtless that red, rusty, foxy colour had some 

 thing to do with the christening of the species. It adds 

 as much as the cocksfoot another appropriate rural 

 name to the scheme and colour of a hayfield. A 

 meadow may have a ruddy tint without being foul and 

 barren with dock and sorrel. The sham foxtails, as 

 useless as the true are precious, have none of this charm 

 of colour. The abhorred black-bent does not, like the 

 true foxtail, adorn even a bouquet : as Lord de Tabley 

 records of the mareVtail another sign of unfruitful 

 soil it would be &quot; in all nosegays undesired.&quot; It is to 

 the good that the foxtail will seed itself in the earliest of 

 the cuttings ; and the grass falls at the loveliest moment, 

 when through tall stems and seed heads you may still 

 catch a glimpse, like water under sprouting sedges, of the 

 coloured daisies, trefoil, mellilot, and bedstraw. 



The romantic sense of the machine-made harvest owes 

 much to the horse. The two animals drawing a bay- 

 sweep are so far apart as to look utterly disconnected, 

 but they work in satisfying unison. At a word, with 

 military precision, one will stop and the other swing on 

 its centre till he has half encircled the standing heap. 

 Then forward they go together with &quot; majestic instancy,&quot; 

 lifting half a haystack on the broad sweep between them, 

 and picking up further trifles, through the fence cleared 



