I suppose everybody
is more or less interested in the weather, but the custom of alluding
to the obvious, as an opening to conversation, is probably a survival
from the time when everyone was directly interested in its effect upon
agriculture.
Nothing proves how completely town interests now dominate those of the
country so much as the innovation called "summer time." During the war
it was no doubt a boon to allotment holders, and of course it gives a
longer evening to those employed all day indoors; but it inflicts
direct loss on the farmer, who is practically forced to adopt it in
order to supply the towns with produce in time for their altered
habits. The farmer exchanges the last hour of the normal day, one of
the most valuable in the old working time, for the first hour of the
new day, one of the most useless, for owing to the dew which the sun
has not had time to dry up, many agricultural operations cannot be
properly performed or even commenced--hay-making and corn-hoeing for
instance are impossible. We may be sure that the former times of
beginning and ending farm-work, which I suppose had been customary for
at least 2,000 years in England, did not receive the sanction of such
a period without good reason, and it seems to me, that so far as
outdoor work is concerned the new arrangement savours of "teaching our
grandmothers to suck eggs.
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