On Measure Work. 
119 
conjunction with marling. The land in question was an enclosure 
of barren heath, and had been considered, and really was, previous 
to being drained and marled, worthless. It has now become profit- 
able tillage-land, and is advantageously cultivated under the four- 
course system. But to attempt such a work without carrying out 
the two great parts of agricultural improvement which these soils 
invariably require — namely, draining and marling — is, I think, 
superficial and unwise, and is always attended with disappoint- 
ment and loss. 
Sheriff- Hutton, near York^ 
21 Feb. 1846. 
VII. — On Measure Work. By Hugh Raynbird. 
Prize Essay. 
Believing. that the Society's object in proposing a prize for the 
best account of measure-work is to induce competition among 
those who by observation have become acquainted with its prac- 
tice, and living in a part of the countr}" where a good portion of 
the hoeing, ditching, reaping, mowing, threshing, and other kinds 
of agricultural labour are performed by piece-work, I am in- 
duced to offer the following description of our mode of pro- 
ceeding. 
In commencing the details of the system of measure-work 
adopted by us, and by the farmers in our neighbourhood, I shall 
labour under much difficulty; for I chance to belong to that 
class of homespun farmers who are perhaps better able to work 
with their hands than they are with their heads, and are generally 
better qualified to perform the manual operations of the farm- 
labourer, than to write an essay upon the subject. However, I 
hope the want of skill in composition will serve as an apology for 
the errors that may appear. 
There are many ways of paying the labourer, peculiar to dif- 
ferent parts of the country ; but the chief difference lies between 
the day-labourer, who receives a certain sum of money, or its 
equivalent in other things, for his day's work, and the task- 
labourer, whose earnings depend upon the quantity of work done. 
The employment of men by task-work has been practised in this 
county (Suffolk) almost from time immemorial, if we may be 
allowed to judge by the following interesting extracts from Sir 
John Cullum's History of Hawstead, his information being 
obtained from authentic sources : — 
" In the year 1281 the prices of various kinds of grain, the produce of 
this village (Hawstead, Suffolk) were as follows : of wheat, from 4s. 3d. 
