thought Phillip's job better than theirs.

At dinner, while sipping his claret, Phillip delivered his opinion upon
the agriculture of the district, which he had surveyed from his bicycle.
It was incomplete, stationary, or retrograde. The form of the fields alone
was an index to the character of the farmers who cultivated them. Not one
had a regular shape. The fields were neither circles, squares,
parallelograms, nor triangles. One side, perhaps, might be straight; the
hedgerow on the other had a dozen curves, and came up to a point. With
such irregular enclosures it was impossible that the farmer could plan out
his course with the necessary accuracy. The same incompleteness ran
through everything--one field was well tilled, the next indifferently, the
third full of weeds. Here was a good modern cattle-shed, well-designed for
the purpose; yonder was a tumble-down building, with holes in the roof and
walls.

So, too, with the implements--a farmer never seemed to have a complete
set. One farmer had, perhaps, a reaping machine, but he had not got an
elevator; another had an elevator, but no steam-plough. No one had a full
set of machinery. If they drained, they only drained one field; the entire
farm was never by any possibility finished straight off. If the farmer had
two new light carts of approved construction, he was sure to have three
old rumbling waggons, in drawing which there was a great waste of power.
Why not have all light carts? There was no uniformity. The farming mind
lacked breadth of view, and dwelt too much on detail. It was not, of
course, the fault of the tenants of the present day, but the very houses
they inhabited were always put in the wrong place. Where the ground was
low, flat, and liable to be flooded, the farmhouse was always built by a
brook. When the storms of winter came the brook overflowed, and the place
was almost inaccessible. In hilly districts, where there was not much
water, the farmhouse was situate on the slope, or perhaps on the plateau
above, and in summer very likely every drop of water used had to be drawn
up there from a distance in tanks.

The whole of rural England, in short, wanted rearranging upon mathematical
principles. To begin at the smallest divisions, the fields should be
mapped out like the squares of a chessboard; next, the parishes; and,
lastly, the counties. You ought to be able to work steam-ploughing tackle
across a whole parish, if the rope could be made strong e