given them _a hundred thousand pounds a year_, not out of your riches, but out of the _taxes_, raised, in part, from the _salt_ of the labouring man! Stand forth and face me, who have, from the pen of my leisure hours, sent, amongst your flocks, a hundred thousand sermons in ten months! More than you have all done for the last half century!"--I exclaimed in vain. I dare say (for it was at peep of day) that not a man of them had yet endeavoured to unclose his eyes.--In coming thro' Abingdon (Berks) I could not help thinking of that great financier, Mr. John Maberly, by whom this place has, I believe, the honour to be represented in the Collective Wisdom of the Nation.--In the way to Ilsley we came across a part of that fine tract of land, called the _Vale of Berkshire_, where they grow _wheat_ and _beans_, one after another, for many years together. About three miles before we reached Ilsley we came to _downs_, with, as is always the case, chalk under. Between Ilsley and Newbury the country is enclosed; the land middling, a stony loam; the woods and coppices frequent, and neither very good, till we came within a short distance of Newbury. In going along we saw a piece of wheat with cabbage-leaves laid all over it at the distance, perhaps, of eight or ten feet from each other. It was to catch the _slugs_. The slugs, which commit their depredations in the _night_, creep under the leaves in the morning, and by turning up the leaves you come at the slugs, and crush them, or carry them away. But besides the immense daily labour attending this, the slug, in a field sowed with wheat, has a _clod_ to creep under at every foot, and will not go five feet to get under a cabbage-leaf. Then again, if the day be _wet_, the slug works by day as well as by night. It is the sun and drought that he shuns, and not the light. Therefore the only effectual way to destroy slugs is to sow lime, in dust, and _not slaked_. The slug is wet, he has hardly any skin, his _slime_ is his covering; the smallest dust of hot lime kills him; and a few bushels to the acre are sufficient. You must sow the lime at _dusk_; for then the slugs are sure to be out. Slugs come after a crop that has long afforded a great deal of shelter from the sun; such as peas and vetches. In gardens they are nursed up by strawberry beds and by weeds, by asparagus beds, or by anything that remains for a long time to keep the summer-sun from the earth. We got about three o'clock to this nice, snug little farmhouse, and found our host, Mr. Budd, at home. _Burghclere, Monday, 19 Nov._ A thorough wet day, the only day the greater part of which I have not spent out of doors since I left home. _Burghclere, Tuesday, 20 Nov._