FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS 209 



to lose one-half of the advantage which might be derived from it. The 

 farmer is contented with merely cutting two or three gaps in the 

 watercourse at the top, from which the water flows over the field as 

 it best can, scarcely wetting some parts and making complete pools in 

 others. 



Weeding he considers quite an unnecessary refinement, fit only for 

 those who have plenty of money to waste upon their fancies — except 

 now and then, when the weeds have acquired an alarming preponder- 

 ance over the crop, he perhaps sets feebly to work to extract the more 

 prominent after they have arrived at maturity and the mischief is 

 done. His potatoes are overrun with persicarias, docks, and spurges; 

 his wheat and barley with corn cockle, corn scabious, and knapweed, 

 and his pastures with thistles, elecampine, etc., all in the greatest abun- 

 dance. If you ask him why he leaves his land in such a disgraceful 

 state, and try to impress upon him how much better crops he would 

 have if he cleared it, he will tell you that he does not think they do 

 much harm, and that if he cleaned them this year, there would be as 

 many as ever next year, and, above all, that he can't afford it, asking 

 you where he is to get money to pay people for doing it. 



The poultry, geese, ducks, and fowls are little attended to, being 

 left to pick up their living as well as they can. Geese are fattened by 

 being turned into the corn stubble, the others are generally killed from 

 the yard. The fowls, having no proper places to lay in, are not very 

 profitable with regard to eggs, which have to be hunted for and dis- 

 covered in all sorts of places. This applies more particularly to Gla- 

 morganshire, which is in a great measure supplied with eggs and 

 poultry from Carmarthenshire, or " Sir Gaer " (pronounced there 

 gar) as it is called in Welsh, where they manage them much better. 



If there happens to be in the neighbourhood anyone who farms on 

 the improved English system, has a proper course of .crops, with tur- 

 nips, etc., folds his sheep, and manages things in a tidy manner, it is 

 impossible to make the Welshman believe that such a way of going 

 on pays ; he will persist that the man is losing money by it all the time, 

 and that he only keeps it on because he is ashamed to confess the fail- 

 ure of his new method. Even should the person go on for many years, 

 to all appearance prosperously and in everybody else's eyes making 

 money by his farm, still the Welshman will declare that he has some 

 other source from which he draws to purchase his dear-bought farm- 

 ing amusement, and that the time will come when he will be obliged 

 to give it up; and though you tell him that the greater part of the land 

 in England is farmed in that manner, and ask him whether he thinks 

 they can all be foolish enough to go on losing money year after year, 

 he is still incredulous, says that he knows " the nature of farming," and 

 that such work as that can never pay. While the ignorance which causes 

 this incredulity exists, it is evidently a difficult task to improve him. 



