The crops in the section through which we passed on our first day out of Brest appeared to be good. They gave me, a Californian with considerable farming experience, the impression that agriculture has been very carefully studied by the French. Occasionally we would see small tracts lying fallow, apparently to give the land a needed rest, while other tracts were being cultivated. On some of the small farms it was haying season. We were surprised as we noted the methods of the French farmer in this particular branch of husbandry. The hay was cut mostly by women and children with scythes. An American mower probably had never been seen there. It seemed like a tremendous waste of human energy to see these women and children doing such hard manual labor in the field, when a modern mower would cut the entire field in a very short time. It seems to me there should be a field for the sale of American mowers and other modern American farm machinery in the rural districts of France. While the farms are so small that the individual farmer could not, perhaps, afford to buy a mower, still, several farmers could go in together and buy one, or the community as a whole could buy one, for the common use of all who needed it. Here is something that the French and American Governments might get together on, for surely the French want to conserve the energy of their women and children who now do this hard work, and the Americans want a wider market for their modern farm equipment. It must be said, however, that the women of the French peasantry who were doing this hard work, appeared strong and healthful, and were enured to this difficult labor, no doubt, through many generations of this hard farm life. We noticed as we got away from the coast, that there was a change in the style of dress of the peasants. We no longer saw the round hats with the ribbon streamers hanging down behind, so familiar in the rural districts around Brest. The dress of the peasants, farther in the interior, was more like that of the laboring classes of America. The men and women both wore serviceable clothes of dark material, but few of them wore anything on their heads. Sabots were worn instead of leather shoes. The women wore a sort of an Arctic sock over the stockings; the men frequently wore no socks at all. Occasionally the sabots would be several sizes too large for the wearer, but were made to fit by stuffing straw in them. This must have been rather uncomfortable, but the French peasantry seemed not to mind it at all. While the horse is the principal draft animal in France, oxen are also used by some farmers. Most Western boys have seen teams of oxen, as they are still in use in some of the mountain districts of California, or at least they were still in use up to a few years ago; but to the Eastern boys an ox team was a new and interesting sight, and there was much comment upon it.