s ways both by joining forces
and exchanging services. They may also share in common the use of
church, school, and post office. This French farming system has been
adopted in Canada, while in our own country we follow the English
custom of building isolated farmhouses.

In working season the French farmer must go daily to his labor at
a distance. The people in our picture are fortunate enough to own
a donkey which is their burden-bearer between house and field. The
strong little creature can carry a heavy load properly disposed in
pannier baskets. The panniers are made very deep and wide, but rather
flat, so as to fit the sides of the donkey. With one of these hanging
on each side of the saddle, the weight of the burden is so well
distributed that it is easily borne.

The donkey of our picture has been relieved of his panniers, and now
rests in the shade of some apple-trees. One of the baskets is in the
mean time put to a novel use. Made soft and warm with a heavy cloak,
it forms a nice cradle for the baby. The babies in French peasant
families are often left at home with the grandmother, while the mother
goes out to field work. The painter Millet himself was in childhood
the special charge of his grandmother, while his mother labored on the
farm. The people of our picture have another and, as it seems, a much
pleasanter plan, in going to the field as a family party.

[Illustration: From a carbon print by Braun, Clement & Co John Andrew
& Son, Sc. THE POTATO PLANTERS]

The day is well advanced and the work goes steadily on. It is potato
planting, and the potato crop is of great importance to country
people, second perhaps to the wheat, as it supplies food to both man
and beast. The commoner varieties, as the large white, are raised for
cattle, and the finer and sweeter kinds, the red and the yellow, are
kept for the table.

The laborer and his wife move along the field, facing each other on
opposite sides of the row they are planting. The man turns the sod
with his hoe, a short-handled tool which long practice has taught him
to use skilfully. The wife carries the potato seed in her apron, and
as her husband lifts each spadeful of earth, she throws the seed into
the hole thus made. He holds the hoe suspended a moment while the seed
drops in, and then replaces the earth over it. The two work in perfect
unison, each following the other's motion with mechanical regularity,
as they move down the field together.

The