seems that a whole storm, as it were, of innovations has burst upon the
fields ever since I can recollect, and, as years go, I am still in the
green leaf. The labouring men used to tell me how they went reaping, for
although you may see what is called reaping still going on at
harvest-time, it is not reaping. True reaping is done with a hook alone
and the hand; all the present reaping is 'vagging,' with a hook in one
hand and a bent stick in the other, and instead of drawing the hook
towards him and cutting it, the reaper chops at the straw as he might at
an enemy. Then came the reaping machines, that simply cut the wheat, and
left it lying flat on the ground, which were constantly altered and
improved. Now there are the wire and string binders, that not only cut
the corn, but gather it together and bind it in sheaves--a vast saving in
labour. Still the reaping-hook endures and is used on all small farms,
and to some extent on large ones, to round off the work of the machine;
the new things come, but the old still remains. In itself the
reaping-hook is an enlarged sickle, and the sickle was in use in Roman
times, and no man knows how long before that. With it the reaper cut off
the ears of the wheat only, leaving the tall straw standing, much as if
it had been a pruning-knife. It is the oldest of old implements--very
likely it was made of a chip of flint at first, and then of bronze, and
then of steel, and now at Sheffield or Birmingham in its enlarged form of
the 'vagging' hook. In the hand of Ceres it was the very symbol of
agriculture, and that was a goodly time ago. At this hour they say the
sickle is still used in several parts of England where the object is more
to get the straw than the ear.

On the broad page of some ancient illuminated manuscript, centuries old,
you may see the churl, or farmer's man, knocking away with his flail at
the grain on the threshing-floor. The knock knocking of the flail went on
through the reigns of how many kings and queens I do not know, they are