Occasional visitors come with goods for sale in quest of orders, and some are very persistent and difficult to get rid of.  A man professing to sell some artificial fertilizer called upon me with a small tin sample box, containing a mixture which emitted a most villainous odour.  He sniffed with appreciation at the compound, probably consisting of some nitrogenous material such as wool treated with sulphuric or hydrochloric acid, and began his address.  He had not gone far before I remembered a story of a similar person in Hampshire.  This man had called upon the leading farmers, and offered them a bargain, explaining that some trucks of artificial manure that he had consigned to Walton Station had been sent by mistake to Alton.  He sold many tons in this way without any guarantee as to the analysis, but the buyers found on using it that it was worthless.  The seller tried his game on again the following year, without success.  One farmer whom he followed from the farm-house to a turnip-field went so far as to show him his hunting-crop, and pointing to the field gate at the same time, intimated that if he did not with all speed place himself outside the latter, he would make unpleasant acquaintance with the former.  So now when my caller mentioned a truck of the manure which had come by mistake to Evesham Station, though consigned to Evershot in Somerset, my suspicions were confirmed, and when I innocently remarked, “I think I remember that truck, didn’t it go to Alton once in mistake for Walton?” his countenance fell, and he wished me “good-morning” in a hurry.

Hurdles in Worcestershire are generally made of “withy” (willow), and it is interesting to watch the hurdle-maker at work.  The poles have first to be peeled, which can be done by unskilled labour, the pole being fixed in an improvised upright vice made from the same material.  Then comes the skilled man, who cuts the poles into suitable lengths, and splits the pieces into the correct widths.  Next with an axe he trims off the rough edges, shapes the ends of the rails, and pierces the uprights with a centre-bit.  Then he completes the mortise in a moment with a chisel, the rails being laid in position as guides to the size of the apertures.  The rails are then driven home into the mortise holes, and he skips backwards and forwards, over the hurdle flat on the ground, as he nails the rails to the heads; two pieces, in the form of a V reversed, connect the rails and keep them in place.

In counties where hazel is grown in the coppices, a wattled or “flake” hurdle is the favourite, and they afford much more shelter to sheep in the fold than the open withy hurdle, but, being more lightly made, they require stakes and “shackles” to keep them in position.  The hazel hurdle-maker may be seen in the coppice surrounded by his material and the clean fresh stacks of the work completed.  The process of manufacture differs from that of the open-railed hurdle:  he has an upright framework