He positively could not follow you to a logical conclusion.

If you, for instance, tried to show him that a certain course of cropping was the correct one for certain fields, he would listen for awhile, and then suddenly declare that the turnips in one of the said fields last year were a failure.

That particular crop of turnips had nothing at all to do with the system at large, but the farmer could see nothing else.
What had struck him most, however, in that particular district, as he traversed it on the bicycle, was the great loss of time that must result from the absence of rapid means of communication on large farms.

The distance across a large farm might, perhaps, be a mile.

Some farms were not very broad, but extended in a narrow strip for a great way.