10 
On the Farming of Middlesex. 
compared with arable cultivation requires little capital, few and 
simple farm buildings, and no great amount of agricultural skill. 
The great object is to secure the first hay crop in such a 
condition that it may retain its weight, be set off by the best 
colour and " bouquet," and so command the best price in the 
London market. The other operations of the farm have refer- 
ence, and are made subservient to this main object. Very 
many of the fields are laid out in small, and not very con- 
venient enclosures ; sometimes overgrown with timber in the 
hedgerows, which are generally of white or black thorn, in some 
places ragged and ill-cared for, and usually laid after a 
certain number of years' growth. The elm timber is often 
unduly shredded, and the oaks, especially on the sheer London 
clay, are of stunted growth. As a rule the higher ground, or that 
on the outcrop of the plastic clay, is best clothed with timber, 
especially when, as is generally the case, it is here that gentle- 
mens' seats are placed. On some farms the quickset hedges are 
kept neat and trim. Hay farming, from its very nature, is a 
precarious and anxious occupation, ruled by, and depending very 
much on sudden and unlocked for changes of the weather, and 
requiring the constant and practical application of the old 
proverb to " make hay while the sun shines." 
Many of the farms, and especially those near London, are held 
by persons engaged in some other business. Hay farming can 
never occupy the whole time and attention of a person of active 
and industrious habits. 
Where the land is exclusively under grass the number of 
labourers permanently employed is necessarily few, the horse 
teams being sometimes the only live stock. The mowing is for 
the most part performed by hand labour, by strangers who come 
in companies from the counties of Bucks, Berks, and Oxford, 
and other places. Mowing by machinery is not so often practised 
as might be expected : some persons keep a machine, rather 
" in terrorem," to secure themselves against the difficulty of 
unreasonable demands, as to price, and wages, in time of pres- 
sure, than from preference for this method of cutting the grass 
crop ; some will own that they are unwilling to risk a collision 
with their regular staff of labourers, who look with an evil eye 
on that which they consider (however unjustly) an interference 
with the rights of labour. Mowing is, as in all such cases, 
undertaken by the acre, the price varying very much with the 
state of the weather, the supply of labour, the condition of the 
crop, and such like variable incidents. The haymakers, like 
the hop-pickers of Kent and Surrey, are often strangers from 
various quarters seeking casual, and, for a time, fairly paid 
employment. The Irish element, which at one time bore a 
