clay soils of the Lias formation in that county and its neighbour
Worcestershire.

I have often wondered at, and admired, the labourer's resignation and
fortitude in adversity; a discontented or surly face is rarely seen
among them; they have, like most people, to live lives of
self-sacrifice, frugality, and industry, which doubtless bring their
own compensation, for the exercise and habit of these very virtues
tend to the cheerfulness and courage which never give up. Possibly,
too, the open-air life, the vitalizing sunshine, the sound sleep, and
the regularity of the routine, endows them with an enviable power of
enjoyment of what some would consider trifles. After a long day out of
doors in the natural beauty of the country, who shall say that the
labourer's appetite for his evening meal, his pipe of tobacco beside
his bright fireside, and his detachment from the outside world, do not
afford him as great or greater enjoyment than the elaborate luxury of
the millionaire, with his innumerable distractions and
responsibilities?

The labourer has, as I have said, little appreciation of the invisible
or what does not appeal strongly to his senses; he cannot understand,
for instance, that a small bag of chemical fertilizer, in the form of
a grey, inoffensive powder, can contain as great a potentiality for
the nutrition of crops as a cartload of evil-smelling material from
the farmyard; nor is he aware that, in the case of the latter, he has
to load and unload 90 pounds or thereabouts of worthless water in
every 100 pounds with which he deals. Possibly, however, his
preference for the natural fertilizer is not wholly misplaced, for
there is, no doubt, much still to be learned concerning the relative
values of natural and artificial compounds with special reference to