in print, but would try to write me out a few. Here is one he gave me in praise of the hop-bine: —
"A song and a cheer for good English beer,
That froths in the foaming can;
The beer and the bine in union join
To gladden the heart of man.
When the Spring appears, the bine it uprears,
Its circuline race begins,
Till it reaches at length its beauty and strength,
And waves in the summer winds.
Chorus—So long may the hops in their beauty stand,
And still be the pride of our native land."
And so on for four stanzas more.
In the woodlands a very important branch of labour is the felling and preparing timber for the market. St Leonard's Forest covers a tract of 9000 acres, in the cross-roads of which it is easy to lose the way, especially after dark. A sawyer, who had lived thirty-five years in the forest, told me that he could remember when it was far more extensive than it is now. Oaks are mainly raised, and some exist of an enormous size. Certain of them are quite famous.
The poverty of the people he described as excessive. He had no idea how they managed, but supposed they must be half starved. Throughout the Weald the labourers add a little to their income by working in the woods during the spring. They are employed by the timber merchant, and the job lasts about a month. They work by the piece, and their business is at first to fell the timber, and then to strip it and set up the bark. The whole of this work goes by the name of "flawing." "Faggoting the lop" and scraping and "hatching" the bark are different operations. A man can earn by "flawing" two-and-sixpence to six shillings a day; women and children do the scraping. In some parts felling timber goes on all the winter, from November to March, and if a woodman is clever he gets from twelve to fifteen shillings a week. In autumn a good deal of wood is cut for other purposes—as, for instance, making gunpowder. Near Uckfield I met a man driving a cart laden with black alder, going to be used for this purpose. The carter was unshaven, and a true Sussex man in his dialect.
