82 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
of relief might be apportioned. Men coming from a 
distance, or even from the next parish, were jealously 
excluded from settling, lest there should be more 
mouths to feed; if a family, on the other hand, could 
by any possibility be got rid of, it was exiled. There 
were more hands than work ; now the case is precisely 
opposite. A grim witness, this old tomb, to a tra- 
ditionary fragment in that history of the people 
which is now placed above a mere list of monarchs, 
The oldest person in the village was a woman—as 
is often the case—reputed to be over a hundred: a 
tidy cottager, well tended, feeble in body, but brisk 
of tongue. She reckoned her own age by the thatch 
of the roof. It had been completely new thatched 
five times since she could recollect. The first time 
she was a great girl, grown up: her father had it 
thatched twice afterwards ; her husband had it done 
the fourth time, and the fifth was three years ago. 
That made about a hundred years altogether. 
The straw had lasted better lately, because there 
were now no great elm trees to drip, drip on it in 
wet weather. Cottagers are frequently really squat- 
ters, building on the waste land beside the highway 
close to the hedgerow, and consequently under the 
trees. This dripping on the roof is very bad for 
thatch. Straw is remarkably durable, even when 
exposed to the weather, if good in the first place and 
well laid on. It may be reckoned to last twenty 
years on an average, perhaps more. Five thatchings, 
