FROM EAR TO BLADE z6i 



cuttcr-and-binder. We were vouchsafed no aisles of 

 stooks, and the waiting sparrows were balked of weeks 

 of easy feeding. The partridge coveys, which always 

 delight in the field, had scarcely more than a week or two 

 to enjoy the stubble and the scattered grain ; for back 

 came the tractor in a trice, this time with a three-furrow 

 plough in its wake-; and in place of the yellow straw, 

 which offered good walking and even motoring of a new 

 sort, we had to be content with &quot; the good gigantic smile 

 of the brown, old earth/ That, too, is now hidden. 

 Blades of corn, three inches in length and high enough 

 to filter the sunlight, run in straight lines over the whole 

 of the thirty acres. So are we 



hurled 



From change to change unceasingly, 

 Our souls wings never furled. 



If one may quote half-forgotten Browning, that &quot; born 

 sloven/* as a later critic says, twice within a few lines. 



England without stooks and without stubbles is a 

 new island ; but the old charm survives. Yet the changes 

 are so quick in some years that we feel scarcely at home. 

 The countryside has been a &quot;Movie,&quot; a film run off 

 rather too rapidly for the observer, though not for the 

 farmer. And what a tribute has been paid to the English 

 clime ! This new grain crop, that makes a sheet of ruled 

 foolscap of the brown field, strengthens its roots and 

 hold on the ground, till it is proof, or nearly proof, 

 against frost and wind and water-spout. It is already, as 

 farmers say, &quot; a good plant,&quot; and to continue their fine 

 idiom the land is &quot; in good heart.&quot; It is also &quot; clean.&quot; 

 A shallow cultivator pulled out the twitch, couch, quitch, 

 stroll or quickens grass, which was burnt to death on 

 light soils by the sole agency of the sun without interven- 



