84 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
The farmers find it an expensive crop. It costs 50/ or 
60/. to pick a very small garden, and if the Egyptian 
plague of insects has prevailed the price at market will 
not repay'the expenditure. The people talk much of a 
possible duty on foreign hops. The hop farmer should 
have a lady-bird on his seal ring for his sign and token, 
for the lady-bird is his great friend. Lady-birds (and 
their larvze) destroy myriads of the aphides which cause 
rust, and a flight of lady-birds should be welcomed as 
much as a flight of locusts is execrated in other coun- 
tries. 
Il. 
ONE of the hop-picking women told me how she went 
to church and the parson preached such a curious 
sermon, all about our ‘innerds’ (inwards, insides), and 
how many ‘ boanes’ we had, and by-and-by ‘he told us 
that we were the only beasts who had the use of our 
hands.’ Years since at village schools the girls used to 
swallow pins; first one would do it, then another,” 
presently half the school were taking pins. Ignorant of 
physiology! Yet they did not seem to suffer ; the pins 
did not penetrate the pleura or lodge in the processes. 
Now Anatomy climbs into the pulpit and shakes a 
bony fist at the congregation. That is the humerus of 
it, as Corporal Nym might say. At the late election— 
the cow election—the candidates were Brown, Conser- 
vative, and Stiggins, Liberal. The day after the polling 
a farm labourer was asked how he filled up his voting 
paper. ‘Oh,’ said he full of the promised cow, ‘I doan't 
