When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all the upturned soil battened down by the hengha, the next thing is to commence the ploughing.

Four months later, when Mathieu and his men had finished the autumn ploughing, there came the sowing on the same spot.

She went to Wyck and posted her letters, and then to the Far Acres field where Jerrold was watching the ploughing.

For it is known, that after a time any subsoil so treated may be turned up with safety, and consequently there is no risk of loss by delaying this deeper ploughing for a few years; and in regard to the question of expense, it appears that the cost of both draining and subsoiling are generally repayed by the first two or three crops which succeed each improvement.

A glance at the countryside conjures up a picture of extensive tracts being cultivated on a wholesale scale, of skilled men directing great ploughing, sowing, and reaping plants, steering cattle and sheep about carefully designed enclosures, constructing channels and guiding sewage towards its proper destination on the fields, and then of added crowds of genial people coming out to spray trees and plants, pick and sort and pack fruits.

[Footnote 82: Although Varro advises the first ploughing in the spring, the ancients were not unmindful of the advantages of winter ploughing of stiff and heavy clay.

Inasmuch as the mind needs deep ploughing for the new culture, and the majority can get no more than a superficial raking, the peasant of to-day is often a poorer man intellectually than his father waspoorer by the loss of faith and the confusion of ideas.

The origin of this fable is as follows:the public sign or symbol exposed by the Egyptians in their assemblies, to warn the people to mark the depth of the inundation of the Nile, in order to regulate their ploughing accordingly, was the figure of a man with a dog's head, carrying a pole with serpents twisted round it, to which they gave the name of Anubis, Thaaut, and Aesculapius.

The hounds and terriers feel the heat, so sending them home by the keeper, we diverge on our respective roads, ride over our cultivation, seeing the ploughing and preparations generally, till hot, tired, and dusty, we reach home about 11.30, tumble into our bath, and feeling refreshed, sit down contentedly to breakfast.

Horace cites it with telling effect in the ode (III, 5) in which he describes the noble serenity of mind with which Regulus returned to the torture and certain death which awaited him at Carthage: and Homer makes an enduring picture of it in the person of the King supervising his fall ploughing, which Hephsestus wrought upon the shield of Achilles (Iliad, XVIII, 540).

"You know surely," he says, "that an acre sown with wheat takes three ploughings, except lands which are sown yearly, and that one with another each ploughing is worth six pence, and harrowing a penny, and on the acre it is necessary to sow at least two bushels.

" Similarly, the red poppies which followed the ploughing of the field of Waterloo after the Duke of Wellington's victory were said to have sprung from the blood of the troops who fell during the engagement; and the fruit of the mulberry, which was originally white, tradition tells us became empurpled through human blood, a notion which in Germany explains the colour of the heather.

We call that corn land (seges) which has been ploughed and sowed as distinguished from plough land (arva) which has been ploughed but not yet sowed, while that land which was formerly sowed and lies awaiting a new ploughing is called stubble (novalis).

In the autumn comes the ploughing, the couch-picking and burning, often second ploughing, the sowing by drill or hand, the threshing, &c. In the spring will come more ploughing, sowing, harrowing, hoeing.