And there was the abandonment of the Corn Market proper, for the class of farmers who survived hated to transact their business indoors.  The attendance of millers and dealers, except of those who had cargoes of foreign corn at Gloucester or Bristol to dispose of, became irregular.  Sales of farm stock and implements took place in every village on farms which had passed from father to son for generations, coupled with the sacrifice of valuable implements and machinery for want of buyers.  There followed the stage when landowners who could find no tenants, and had heavily mortgaged estates, essayed to make the best of them by laying away the arable land to pasture, undertaking the management themselves with, perhaps, an old broken-down tenant as bailiff.  The politicians and the general public did not apprehend the danger of the situation, in spite of innumerable warnings, until the German submarines were sending our foreign food supplies to the bottom of the sea; and now that the immediate danger of starvation has passed, they appear already to have lapsed again into an attitude of apathy.

We hear the blessed word “reconstruction” on every side, but the only official propositions for the permanent establishment of agricultural prosperity that I have heard are utterly inadequate.  It is ridiculous to suppose that a few thousand acres of special crops, like tobacco, for instance, only possible in favoured spots, can in any way compensate for the loss of millions of acres of arable land under rotations of corn and green crops.  Under present conditions nothing is more certain than the abandonment of arable land as such; and it is folly to talk of novel systems of transport for a dwindling output, or of building labourers’ cottages at an unjustifiable cost, which are never likely to be wanted by a dying industry.

Among my experiences of abnormal weather, I have a note of a remarkable summer flood on July 21, 1875, when my hay was lying in the meadows beside the brooks, and had to be removed to higher ground in pouring rain to prevent its disappearance with the current.  On the following day, July 22, the highest flood since 1845 occurred at Evesham.

October 14, 1877, was memorable for the most terrific south-west gale that happened in all the years I passed at Aldington; thirteen trees, mostly old apple trees and elms, were blown down, including the splendid veteran “Chate boy” pear tree at Blackminster, an exceedingly sad and irreparable loss.  The gale blew hardest in special tracks, the course of which could be followed by the destruction of trees and branches in distinct lanes, cut through woods and plantations.