HAYMAKING.

'THE JUKE'S COUNTRY' A rattling, thumping, booming noise, like the beating of their war drums by savages, comes over the hedge where the bees are busy at the bramble flowers.

The bees take no heed, they pass from flower to flower, seeking the sweet honey to store at home in the hive, as their bee ancestors did before the Roman legions marched to Cowey Stakes.

Their habits have not changed; their 'social' relations are the same; they have not called in the aid of machinery to enlarge their liquid, wealth, or to increase the facility of collecting it.

There is a low murmur rather than a buzz along the hedgerow; but over it the hot summer breeze brings the thumping, rattling, booming sound of hollow metal striking against the ground or in contact with other metal.