21 SEPTEMBER 1951, Page 13

How depressing it is to see hardly anything but the

baler in the harvest fields and stacks like piles of boxes! The arm of the machine jogs up and down like an animated or rather clockwork signpost. No wonder thatching is dying out when good wheat-straw is so hard to come by. The combine-harvester makes a dreadful mess of the straw, so that it is only fit for litter or stamping down, and cattle-yards to the latter end are, alas, old-fashioned husbandry. The straw, too, is often burned and that must make old Idea in Jefferies's Amaryllis at the Fair turn in his grave. Owing to the wet and prolonged winter, harvesting has been extremely irregular this year, and 1 have seen adjacent fields in ear, in stook, swept bare and in plough all at the same time.