Mixed Company
Hedge-Trimmings. By A. G. Street. (Faber and Faber. 7s. 6d.)
THIS collection of essays, ten of which were broadcast during the summer of last year, contains the- musings, sentimental and serious, of a- farmer old enough to remember what farming used to be, yet open-minded enough to realize that the changes which are taking place were unavoidable, however much they may go Against the grain. Indeed, Mr. Street's main con- viction is that the growing of wheat in England is a thing of the past, and that the sooner it- gives way completely to dairy-farming, poultry-rearing and vegetable-growing, the better. He bases this view on a long experience of the actual business of growing wheat in England, and on the un- favourable' contrast it presents with the same process in Canada, where he worked for a time. Whatever may be said on the other side—and there is a good deal which can be said —it would be rash in this age of conflicting theories to ignore opinions formed, like Mr. Street's, not upon paper, but in the -hard school of experience. Mr. Street is not always equally consistent on other aspects of the agricultural problem. Ile describes in one essay the melancholy business of a farm sale—a common event in these days, which would not, he says, -excite 'his sympathy if it merely -weeded out the in- efficient. This unfortunate farmer was no incompetent, how- ever, but one of many who had failed in spite of-almost super- human efforts and a thorough knowledge of his business. Then why does Mr. Street look on all Stateaid to farming with suspicion ? - No doubt he has his reasons, but one would have liked them gone into a little more. And one would like to know his views upon the huge discrepancy between what a farmer gets for his produce and -what the public has to pay for it : this, if anything, surely has an important bearing on the whole question. '
On the sentimental side, Mr. Street is always pleading : and
it is to his credit that he, sighing as he does for wheat-farming es an occupation, and for the beauty of ploughed country, can look forward so resolutely to an England without either. Not all his essays are taken up with the graver problems of agriculture : he has something to say, for example, on the hiker and the trespasser, on fishing, and on egg-hunting in the good old days. The only fault one can find with this book is that a number of essays, which may have been satisfactory as wireless talks, are a little too slight to appear in volume form.
ROMILLY JOHN.
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