HARVESTING IN ONE.
Early this summer, it was given as a sign of the loss of capital in farming that no machinery was exhibited at an Eastern Counties' show. May we take it. as a symptom that confidence (which is credit, if not capital) is returning, that the Royal Show largely consisted of streets of machines, many new and some of quite portentous size ? Among interesting novelties (ordered though not exhibited at the show) was a cutter and binder with a disc-harrow behind it. This means that in Hampshire we shall see grain cut and put into sheaf, and the ground scratched up all at the same time. This has already been done here and there in France, which in general is far behind England in the use of agricultural machinery. Indeed, some peasants still use a sickle, and very many a scythe for cutting their corn. Incidentally I have seen a smallholder in the Aisne district cut his wheat by mowing towards the standing crop, not as is usual the world over so that the cut straws fall away from the erect. The reason was that he was followed by his wife, who collected the swath into sheaves ; and it was much easier for her to get her arms under the wheat when it was slightly tilted against the upstanding straws. How desperately hard and continuously the two worked ! The woman's arms were as tough as a strand of shark's leather.
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