fads and fancies . by W J Dore-Dennis . the gardens , flower and kitchen , had been much neglected . the new owner , admitting that he knew practically nothing of horticulture , gave my friend Ole &apos;Arry carte blanche , and I was not surprised that the estate was quickly transformed . in the first spring after Harry &apos;s appointment he looked me up . did I want any tomato plants ? I did , and asked how many and how much ? his reply was staggering : &apos;underds , an&apos; fer nuffin&apos; . it appeared that he had treated the gardens with manure from the sewage farm . the tomato plants were the result , but his employer , when informed as to the origin of the vast crop , had turned fair pernickety , ordering that all the plants were to be destroyed and new ones procured from a local nursery . Harry and I did well with our condemned plants , which gave a crop excellent both in quality and quantity . our surplus was gladly taken by the village greengrocer , who in turn supplied Harry &apos;s pernickety employer and his family , the nursery-bought plants having failed to come up to expectations . country scales and weights . by L Sanders . a century and more ago country people had to rely on improvisation and the local craftsman for most of their essential equipment , including means to weigh their produce . the Avery historical Museum has been collecting old weighing instruments from all over the world for a number of years , during which it has acquired many interesting examples made and used in our own countryside . stone weights are among the simpler of these . some may be three or four hundred years old , made from stones taken from field or hillside . when farmers had to weigh produce for market and were unable to obtain foundry-made iron weights locally , they sought stones of suitable size , shape and weight and took them to the smith to be fitted with iron lifting rings . then , by a little chipping or the addition of lead , they were adjusted to compare with a neighbour &apos;s weights or with the manorial standards . hard igneous rocks , such as granite , made serviceable weights , reasonably impervious to moisture and capable of withstanding hard wear and exposure . occasionally stone weights of the larger denominations , such as twenty-eight and fifty-six pounds , turn up . the large oval one marked 59 , illustrated on the previous page , would have been used to weigh bales of wool , the extra three pounds being an agreed tare allowance for straps or bindings . this and the twelve-pound weight came from Jersey and were undoubtedly fashioned from large rounded beach pebbles flattened to form a base . the square weight below is from Shropshire and , though figured 56 , weighs only forty-five pounds . this is due not to any dishonesty on the part of the original owner , but to the loss of its lead loading from the large cavity on the under side . cart weighbridges and platform-scales , an English invention of the mid eighteenth century , were scarce even in towns and certainly unknown to the farm worker until well into the second half of the nineteenth century . the countryman mostly used beam-scales or hanging steelyards made in the towns by small family concerns employing a few craftsmen and apprentices . some surviving examples are as crude as those used by the ancient Egyptians four or five thousand years earlier , but others show some appreciation of the fundamentals of the science . among the cruder examples are the wooden butter-scales shown below ; they are about three hundred years old . a central stand or pillar , turned like a chair-leg on a primitive lathe , carries a wooden beam pivoted on a round iron peg : two wooden bowls or platters are suspended from the ends of the beam . scales of this type were used in farmhouses up to the end of the last century . larger hanging wooden beam-scales were often part of the equipment of the miller for weighing sacks of grain and flour . they were sometimes as much as six feet long and strongly constructed with metal fittings and rudimentary knife-edges , combining the skills of carpenter and smith . they could be used to weigh several sacks at a time on scale-plates suspended from the end knives by shackles and chains . the wooden beam-scale opposite is a comparatively small one , about two feet in length , and probably two hundred years old . in contrast , the professional scale-makers of the town constructed their products entirely of metal . steelyards , based on the principle of the uneven-armed balance used by the Romans and still known by their name , were in common use , for they permitted the weighing of heavy loads without a large number of loose weights . as they required greater precision in manufacture than the beam-scales , few home-made examples survive . the seventeenth and eighteenth-century farmhouse steelyards of English and continental origin in the Avery collection are small , as steelyards go , and many have wooden arms with metal fittings , poise and knife-edges . graduation marks are provided by brass pegs driven into the wood at regular intervals . most of them have two fulcrum knives and duplicate suspensions to take either light or heavy goods - a principle used by the Romans . an example of a craftsman-made wooden steelyard can be seen in the illustration of the fine Orkney pundler , which is one of the prized exhibits in the collection . the oak beam is more than six feet in length , and the stone poise weighs thirty-one pounds . graduation marks correspond to multiples of the Scottish pound . all the metal fittings are of wrought iron , including the knives which are now well rounded by wear . the instrument is believed to have been in use for several hundred years , for the beam bears the weight-stamp of George 3 obliterating a number of older marks . also from Orkney is a wooden bismar or Danish steelyard , used by sliding a cord fulcrum along the counterweighted lever to balance a load . the principle was known to early Aryan tribesmen , who found its simplicity convenient for their nomadic way of life . the example illustrated above is three feet long and is thought to be of wych-elm . for some two thousand years the bismar , dhari or Danish steelyard , as it is variously called , has been widely used throughout the Indian sub-continent and the eastern and northern countries of Europe ; but in England it was made illegal in the reign of Edward 3 in favour of the equal-armed beam and Roman-pattern steelyard . new books about the country . read not to contradict and confute , nor to believe and take for granted , nor to find talk and discourse ; but to weigh and consider - Bacon . escapists or realists ? when anyone decides to stop earning a living in the town and tries to earn it in the country , he is dubbed an escapist , as though he were somehow avoiding the responsibilities of civilisation . but when a young couple , a successful journalist married to an attractive hotel publicity officer , leave the West End to brave all weathers in a primitive cottage on the Cornish cliffs , working with their hands to grow potatoes and flowers for a livelihood , they are surely realists in the truest sense . for ten years the Tangyes have struggled against frost and gales , blight and disease , to supply the fickle markets of the industrial cities with early violets , daffodils , anemones and potatoes . when they were nearly ruined fresh hope appeared in the form of a gull on the roof ( Joseph , 18 s ) , which they called Hubert . Derek Tangye describes the whole endeavour , and his wife Jean provides small sketches as illustrations . he writes well enough to sustain interest through all the setbacks , encounters with local characters , economics of market gardening and breezy comments from city friends . it is also delightful to see the townsman &apos;s sentimental feeling for animals and hatred of traps enduring even in the peasant life ; Monty the cat is treated with as much understanding as if all three had stayed in the Mortlake flat and never passed through Lamorna to find Minack . also a grower and journalist , Frederick Street has fought hard to make a living out of rhododendrons and azaleas and now finds his experience has been a fool &apos;s mistress ( Parrish , 17 s 6 d ) . his anger , first at his relatives who disappointed him over his inheritance , a market garden near Woking , then at the difficulties of trying to make fertile 12 acres of derelict land , and finally at the battle between commuter and countryman in his subtopia with its fun-farming and half-way-back-to-the-land movement , makes a provocative autobiography . I enjoyed the table showing the relationship between the type of farming a man does and his weekday train to London , from the 8.45 chicken farmer to the 10.30 ( three days a week only ) owner of a pedigree herd of Jerseys . a more light-hearted realism comes from R M Dashwood , the provincial daughter ( Chatto , 16 s ) of the provincial lady , E M Delafield . she lives in the country near Oxford , bringing up three small boys with the occasional aid of a doctor husband and a German help . her diary is written in the style her mother made famous and should have the same general appeal . but the last war drove many women straight from the university to household drudgery with only a sense of humour and a ready pen to see them through , so the theme is not quite as fresh as it used to be , though an ability to laugh at one &apos;s self and at domestic difficulties is always well worth sharing . believing that we are all countrymen at heart , John Baker also wants to share his rural experiences in the cottage by the springs ( Phoenix , 10 s 6 d ) , his is a short book , chiefly concerned with water , with the pond by the Wiltshire cottage he converted , with springs , water-weeds , irises and lilies , and eventually with piped water for the whole village . Edmund Cooper &apos;s men of Swaledale ( Dalesman , Clapham , via Lancaster , 6 s ) , another small volume , is a neat slice of social history , mostly 19th-century , taken from contemporary diaries . the old farming practices , the crops grown , sheep bred , fertilisers used , bridges built , the amusements of singing , reading , dancing and playing whist , the food and clothes are all mentioned , together with the mining which went hand in hand with the farming , the accidents and fights , and the names of those who emigrated to America when the farming became less arable and the mines closed down . even if you do not know Crackpot Gill or Silkwood Bridge , you will enjoy following briefly the activities of these families in Yorkshire or America . equally easy to follow , though of very different material , is Dennis Wheatley &apos;s Saturdays with bricks ( Hutchinson , 18 s ) . it has nothing to do with international intrigue but is a mixture of anecdotes about the 1914-18 war and sound advice about building brick walls . the author himself is the link ; he laid his first bricks during hostilities and has gone on ever since , so that he can now recommend all the essential tools and clothes , the necessary drink , the way to lay foundations , mix mortar , choose scaffolding and finally lay the actual bricks . compared with this constructive work the war was a chaotic nightmare to which he keeps harking back . the artist Edward Wakeford found the 1939-45 war a different sort of nightmare , which he describes logically after his childhood and student days . in a prize for art ( Macmillan 25 s ) he relives his boyhood in the Isle of Man , walking with his clergyman father , watching the people in church , remembering clearly the things he saw and the way he felt when the bishop visited the family , when a small wild rabbit died or he went down the wrong stairs at the school prize-giving . I felt impelled to read on and share his experiences . finally , a peaceful book : Parson &apos;s evensong , by pilgrim ( Skeffington , 15 s ) . in it a retired church of England clergyman , who prefers to remain anonymous , ruminates over his past life and work , the people , books and places he has known , those he still meets and the faith that has sustained him . - Margaret Campbell . Isca to Thule . Bartholomew Street was called Britayne for many centuries , being the area occupied by the British during Saxon times . 