The ancient method of keeping count of the number of bolts stripped by each worker was identical with that employed in the hop-gardens, and is still frequently used. This is by “tally.” Computation by tally is one of the most ancient—perhaps _the_ most ancient—means of reckoning known, and preceded the use of arithmetic. It consists of taking a short stick of some soft wood, splitting it into equal halves, and cutting notches along it. This method of keeping count is simplicity itself, and absolutely beyond possibility of fraud or error. The method employed was, and is, to give each worker half of the split tally stick; the other half being kept by the foreman. In osier-stripping, upon a bolt, or bundle, of rods being finished, the foreman takes the worker’s half of the tally, and, fitting it to the half he carries, cuts a notch; and so on with each successive bolt. The point is that the notches of these two halves must of necessity agree, or “tally.” The tally system of accounts lasted until a very late period in those most conservative of institutions, Government offices, and it was the accidental flare-up of a great mass of old Exchequer tallies that destroyed the old Houses of Parliament at Westminster, in 1834. The rushes, too, that grow so luxuriantly beside the waters of the upper Thames have some economic value, and form a very bulky harvest. The usual frequenters of the Thames, who see nothing of the river in spring, autumn, or winter, think of the rushes only as those tall sword-like blades of living green that keep guard along so many miles of meadows; but the Thames in April shows a very different complexion of affairs. Then the rush has merely begun to show its sword-point above the water; and does not attain its full height until June. It is in flower during July and August; and in that last month comes the harvest. It is perhaps rather risky harvesting, and is accomplished from a punt. The rush-cutter comes to his work armed with a reaping-hook fixed to the end of a long pole, so that he is enabled to reach deep down below the surface of the water, where the rushes spring from their roots.