right angles to the rigs. In small fields there are generally eight, but sometimes ten, of these rigs, which make in the one case four, in the other five acres. These curious characters carry us back to the old tenures, and archaic cultivation of land, and to a period when the fields were not in pasture, but were arable.
The team generally consisted of eight oxen. Few peasants, however, possessed a whole team, several generally joining together and dividing the produce. Hence the number of "rigs," one for each ox. We often, however, find ten instead of eight; one being for the parson's tithe, the other tenth going to the ploughman.
When eight oxen were employed, the goad would not, of course, reach the leaders, which were guided by a man who walked on the near side. On arriving at the end of each furrow, he turned them round, and, as it was easier to pull than to push them, this gradually gave the furrow a turn towards the left, thus accounting for the slight curvature. Lastly, while the oxen rested on arriving at the end of the furrow, the ploughman scraped off the earth which had accumulated on the coulter and ploughshare, and the accumulation of these scrapings gradually formed the balk.
It is fascinating thus to trace indications of old customs and modes of life, but it would carry us away from the present subject.
Even though the Swiss meadows may offer a greater variety, our English fields are yet rich in flowers: yellow with cowslips and primroses, pink with cuckoo flowers and purple with orchis, while buttercups, however unwelcome to the eye of the farmer, turn many a meadow into a veritable field of the cloth of gold, and there are few prettier sights in nature than an English hay-field on a summer evening, with a copse, perhaps, at one side, and a brook on the other; men with forks tossing the hay in the air to dry; women with wooden rakes arranging it in swaithes ready for the great four-horse waggon, or collecting it in cocks for the night; while some way off the mowers are still at work, and we hear from time to time the pleasant sound of the sharpening of the scythe. All are working with a will, lest rain should come and their labour be thrown away. This too often happens. But, though we often complain of our English climate, it is yet, take it all in all, one of the best in the world, being comparatively free from extremes either of heat or cold, drought or deluge. To the happy mixture of sunshine and rain we owe the greenness of our fields, lit and
Warmed by goiden sunshine,
And fed by silver rain,
which now and again sprinkles the whole earth with diamonds.
