A Rural Scene
If anyone desires a picture of rural England he might do worse than attend one of the competitions for ploughing and other rural arts that begin to flourish again in the counties. The county councils give a certain number of prizes, though the locality supply most. Farmers attend in large quantities, and sometimes entertain in the best old English style with beef and beer in a barn ! Such a competition, which includes the pretty craft of hedging, will be held at Redbourn, Hertfordshire, on October 15th. I attended one last year and was particularly interested to see present some very Cockney small boys spending a holiday week at a charity home,. and to discover that one of them at any rate made up his mind that country work was the thing for him. We hear not infrequent lamentations that the country crafts are vanishing, that thatchers and ditchers have become rare birds. One art, that of hedge-laying, has quite certainly improved, thanks to very well organised instruction ; and the encouragement Of such competitions as these. It is worth notice that at nearly all of them the entries for horse-ploughing are larger than those for tractor ploughing.
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