2 5 6 NOVEMBER 



tractor-drawn plough excels in an almost automatic 

 method of converting the plough to a trackless sledge. 

 The common ploughman must heave with some exercise 

 of force, and it is therefore scarcely possible to end or 

 begin the ploughing with quite geometric precision. 

 So the tractor-ploughed strips excelled the horse-ploughed 

 in the straightness of the crossline at the headlands. 

 Only the winner had rivalled or excelled the tractors 

 (with whom he was not in competition) in the precision 

 of that line. Mr. Euclid would have passed his diagram ; 

 and the folds of earth overlapping up to the ridged centre 

 were as even as the cloth rolls folded by a master tailor. 

 Not a speck of yellow stubble or green appeared. It 

 would all moulder into fertility in autumnal mists and 

 winter rain. The two wise old Shire horses needed 

 scarcely a word, much less a tug, from either of the two 

 ropes that were their only rein. One stepped along the 

 furrow without fraying the edge and the other along the 

 flat in as straight a line as their driver could desire ; and 

 stopped and side-stepped more in obedience to their 

 own sense of the job than the orders of their officer. 



It was a short march to the hedge, untouched for a 

 generation, where the hedgers and ditchers were at work, 

 while a farmer of fine energy and a native gift of clear 

 description explained both to a group of school 

 children and a young M.F.H. the true inwardness of 

 the art. We all know what a well-laid hedge looks like 

 the top neat and firm as a good ploughman s line, and 

 made as a rule with long withes of ha2el wattled together. 

 These are the &quot; headers,&quot; and they are plaited round the 

 upright stakes, cut at level height with one neat diagonal 

 blow. Yet the finer points of the craft lie not in the 

 wattling or the uprights, but in the laying. The heavier 

 trunks of the old hedge must be so cut that they will 



