140 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
green leaf. The labouring men used to tell me how 
they went reaping, for although you may see what is 
called reaping still going on at harvest-time, it is not 
reaping. True reaping is done with a hook alone and 
the hand; alf the present reaping is ‘ vagging,’ with a 
hook in one hand and a bent stick in the other, and 
instead of drawing the hook towards him and cutting it, 
the reaper chops at the straw as he might at an enemy. 
Then came the reaping machines, that simply cut the 
wheat, and left it lying flat on the ground, which were 
constantly altered and improved. Now there are the 
wire and string binders, that not only cut the corn, but 
gather it together and bind it in sheaves—a vast saving 
in labour. Still the reaping-hook endures and is: used 
on all small farms, and to some extent on large ones, to 
round off the work of the machine; the new things 
come, but the old still remains. In itself the réeaping- 
hook is an enlarged sickle, and the sickle was in use in 
Roman times, and no man knows how long before that, 
With it the reaper cut off the ears of the wheat only, 
leaving the tall straw standing, much as if it had been 
a pruning-knife. It is the oldest of old implements— 
very likely it was made of a chip of flint at first, and 
then of bronze, and then of steel, and now at Sheffield 
or Birmingham in its enlarged form of the ‘vagging’ 
hook. In the hand of Ceres it was the very symbol of 
agriculture, and that was a goodly time ago. At this 
hour they say-the sickle is still used in several parts of 
England where the object is more to get the straw than 
the ear. 
On the broad page of some ancient illuminated 
manuscript, centuries old, you may see the churl, or 
farmer’s man, knocking away with his flail at the grain 
on the threshing-floor. The knock knocking of the 
