rs took place.

Where there was lately nothing but furze and rabbits there is now a
busy human population. Why was it that for so many hundreds of years
the population of England remained nearly stationary? and why has it
so marvellously increased in this last forty years? The history of
this place seems to answer that interesting question. The increase
is due to the facilities of communication which now exist, and to
the numberless new employments in which that facility of
communication took rise, and which it in turn adds to and fosters.

UNEQUAL AGRICULTURE

In the way of sheer, downright force few effects of machinery are
more striking than a steam-ploughing engine dragging the shares
across a wide expanse of stiff clay. The huge engines used in our
ironclad vessels work with a graceful ease which deceives the eye;
the ponderous cranks revolve so smoothly, and shine so brightly with
oil and polish, that the mind is apt to underrate the work
performed. But these ploughing engines stand out solitary and apart
from other machinery, and their shape itself suggests crude force,
such force as may have existed in the mastodon or other unwieldy
monster of the prehistoric ages. The broad wheels sink into the
earth under the pressure; the steam hissing from the escape valves
is carried by the breeze through the hawthorn hedge, hiding the red
berries with a strange, unwonted cloud; the thick dark brown smoke,
rising from the funnel as the stoker casts its food of coal into the
fiery mouth of the beast, falls again and floats heavily over the
yellow stubble, smothering and driving away the partridges and
hares. There is a smell of oil, and cotton-waste, and gas, and
steam, and smoke, which overcomes the fresh, sweet odour of the
earth and green things after a shower. Stray lumps of coal crush the
delicate pimpernel and creeping convolvulus. A shrill, short scream
rushes forth and echoes back from an adjacent rick--puff! the
fly-wheel revolves, and the drum underneath tightens its hold upon
the wire rope. Across yonder a curious, shapeless thing, with a man
riding upon it, comes jerking forward, tearing its way through
stubble and clay, dragging its iron teeth with sheer strength deep
through the solid earth. The thick wire rope stretches and strains
as if it would snap and curl up like a tortured snake; the engine
pants loudly and quick; the plough now glides forward, now pauses,
and, as it were, eats its way throug