Evening star., 1898-10-29
THROUGH RURAL ENGLAND
Picturesque Features That Are Missing in
This Country.
Fields That Are Crossed by Foot
Paths-ThOrns to Interfere With
POachers' Work.
From the New York Observer.


During harvest English agricultural Ia
borers are at work in the fields until dark
| ness comes. The last load is often carried
| by moonlight. For both farmers and labor
| ers the harvest time is good time. For
the laborers it means any amount of over
| time at overtime prices. and from June to
September hundreds of thousands of En-
glish laborers nearly double their wages
and put together the savings which are to
carry them and their families with comfor,
through the winter, when the working days
are short and wages not as high as when
farm Dor is in great demand.
Journeying through rural England Just
when the crops are being carried one can
not fail to notice two features about En-
glish helds that are missing in American
neldS. one of these is the extent to which
English fields are cut up by public foot
paths. The other is the studding of the
helds which have been cleared of hay with
stiff thorn bushes cut from the hedges The
footpaths date back to centuries when farm
ing land was not SO valuable nor so closely
cultivated as it is today. Farmers do not
ike these footpaths. Nor do landlords like
them either For a field with a footpatb
across it commands less rent than one that
Is completely inclosed. But in England
once footpath always a footpath. Even
the railways have had to accept this usage,
as any one can see by the frequency of foot
bridges across the lines in rural England
AS regards the studding of newly-mown
fields with stiff thorns that too for Amer
lean readers has an explanation which is
not without interest. 1t is done only in
game countries and the object of the thorns
set up with great frequency in the fields is
to prevent poachers from dragging them at
mght with nets. Wherever this studdng of
the fields with hawthorn stakes occurs it
is proof that game preserving is carried on
In the neighborhood, and that the game
Keepers expect trouble from their inveterate
enemies the pOaCherS.
AS one nears the larger towns. especially
the towns which are great railway centers,
1t Is easy to see how fond the English town
workman of the Mdlands is of a bit of
land, and how in the twilight of the sum-
mer evening he busies himself with his al
lotment. He Is usually at work in his al
lotment by half-past six. After leaving
work he allows himself about an hour to
get home take supper and smoke a pipe.
and then off he goes to his garden patch
Oftenumes his wife and children go with
him, and there they stay, all more or less
at work, until darkness drives them home
The work Is not especially hard 1t is done
IN iesurely way, varied with a little gos-
sip with the proprietors of neigh hboring
patches; and where field of fifteen or
twenty acres is divided into these garden
lots the scene on a summer evening is about
as pleasing as any scene which presents it.
sell In journey through the Midlands.
1t Is curious that these garden patch
scenes are more common in the Mfdlands
than in the north of England. They are
seldom seen on the outskirts of the wooden
and cotton factory towns of Yorkshire and
Lancashire. They invariably occur, how
ever. in the neighborhOod of a railway CEN
ter in the Mdlands, where a great rail-
way company has esta blished It's locomotive
works or its factories. l think this is
due to the fact that railway artisans and
Workmen are recruited mostly in the rural
districts and transplanted, as it were to
the towns, while the factory operatives of
Yorkshire and Lancashire are townbred
a 70 ba 10,
The English socialists sometimes condemn
the allotment system. They argue that if
man adds to his earnings by working in
an allotment in his spare time his employer
will note his added prosperity and soon
offer him less wages. But whatever there
may be in this socialistic argument the al
lotment system thrves in the outskirts of
the large towns in the Midlands and it Ger
tamly adds to the picturesqueness and
charm of twilight journey across En-
gland.