Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/313

Rh such an exercise for example as this: to undertake to draw a fifty-six pound weight up a hill at the end of a string forty feet long. Having tried this little experiment in tractorial forces two or three times, he would be quite likely to hitch his horses nearer to the load thereafter. Apparently no modern improvements have impaired this homage and tribute to solidity. I doubt if the road-wagons of English farmers of to-day weigh a single pound less than they did before MacadamMcAdam [sic] was born, or when the highways of the country were made of its own clay or sand.

But not only horseflesh is so burdened and wasted by this "terrible tractoration," but human bone, blood, and muscle are fearfully sacrificed to this the most exacting of Penates Anglicani. From the cradle to the grave the English agricultural labourer bears the heavy burden of this homage. Should this book go to another edition. I intend it shall present, among its illustrations, not only English and American wagons, carts, ploughs, scythes, rakes, and axes, but also the farm-labourers' shoes of the two countries, in comparison. Those worn by the majority of the agricultural labourers here are veritable clogs to locomotion, in weight half leather and half iron. Indeed the latter must often preponderate. When on my walk from London to Land's End,