53 Wild Life in a Southern County 



These strips are made into ladies' workbaskets and endless 

 knick-knacks. The flexibility of the willow is surprising 

 when reduced to these narrow pieces, scarcely thicker than 

 stout paper. This industry used to keep many hands 

 employed. There were willow-looms in the village, and 

 to show their dexterity the weavers sometimes made a 

 shirt of willow — of course only as a curiosity. The de- 

 velopment of straw weaving greatly interfered with this 

 business ; and now it is followed by a few only, who are 

 chiefly engaged in preparing the raw material to go else- 

 where. 



From the ash woods on the slopes and the copses of 

 the fields large ash-poles are brought, which one or two 

 old men in the place spend their time splitting up for 

 ' flakes ' — a ' flake ' being a frame of light wood, used after 

 the manner of a hurdle to stop a gap, or pitched in a row 

 to part a field into two. Hurdle-making is another in- 

 dustry ; but of late years hurdles have been made on a 

 large scale by master carpenters in the market-towns, who 

 employ several men, and undersell the village maker. 



The wheelwright is perhaps the busiest man in the 

 place ; he not only makes and mends waggon and cart 

 wheels, and the body of those vehicles, but does almost 

 every other kind of carpentering. Sometimes he combines 

 the trade of a builder with it — if he has a little capital — 

 and puts up cottages, barns, sheds, &c, and his yard is 

 strewn with timber. There is generally a mason, who goes 

 about from farm to farm mending walls and pigsties, and 

 all such odd jobs, working for his own hand. 



The blacksmith of course is there — sometimes more 

 than one — usually with plenty to do ; for modem agri- 

 culture uses three times as much machinery and ironwork 

 as was formerly the case. At first the blacksmiths did 



