Country Life and Sport
A FIELD CENSUS. .
It is an amusement, not without instructive qualities, to pass some of the hours of a railway journey in taking a census of the fields by what you pass. Count, for example, in the English Midlands how ninny unfilled fields come consecutively and how much they contain. In going from London to Shrewsbury last week I counted over one stretch 156 fields before I saw a single workman of any sort, a single person engaged in agriculture. The first series of grass fields numbered nineteen consecutively, of which four only held any stock. The rest were quite empty. Incidentally, every one of these nineteen fields was freely dotted with mole heaps, which made some look almost as if they had been ploughed up. The grass greatly exceeded the plough even to the very edge of big towns full of workers greedy for food—both vege- tarian and carnal. This is, of course, the dead period of the year. Most of the ploughing has been done ; and not a great many farmers much care to sow in January, though it is theoretically one of the sowing months. But, when all allowances are made, the emptiness of the Midlands contrasts abruptly with the south and cast of England and more abruptly with most other countries.
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