1903.] on Bural England. 323 



vation may be attributed to a far earlier period, perhaps even to 

 Eoman, or pre-Roman days. 



To come to more modern instances of a population that has 

 vanished, I will quote two examples which I was fortunate enough 

 to be able to discover. The first of these was demonstrated by a 

 map that I saw of the parish of Feckenham in Worcestershire, which 

 was executed by the order of Queen Elizabeth at the date of the 

 Disforestation in 1591 — or to be accurate, I saw a copy of this map 

 made by one John Dobarte in 1744. According to this chart, in 

 the days of Elizabeth 3000 out of about 7000 acres which compose 

 the parish, were held by no fewer than sixty-three different owners. 

 To-day nearly the entire parish — namely 6000 acres of it — is held 

 by six owners. It is a curious case of the passing away of the land 

 from the people into the hands of a single class. 



In the parish of Western Colvile in Cambridgeshire I came across 

 an even more remarkable example. Here I was shown a large 

 detailed map executed in 1612 which had been found by the owner of 

 the land hidden away in a cottage. This map tells us in unmistake- 

 able fashion that in 1612 about 2000 acres of the area of Western 

 Colvile were held by some three hundred different owners — say an 

 average of six acres to an owner. Now the said 2000 acres, over 

 which I drove, is, I think, owned by one person and occupied by 

 three, and the tiny strips into which it was divided are merged into 

 vast, lonely fields. 



How, even in the time of James I., when wants were few, these 

 three hundred owners earned a living, with the aid of but little 

 manure, from soil so light that in places it is almost a blowing sand, 

 is a mystery that I do not pretend to solve. I suppose, however, 

 that they forced the land to bear sufficient corn and meat for their 

 sustenance and that of their families, and sufficient wool for their 

 clothing. It must not be supposed that I suggest that these small 

 holders of the past always, or indeed often, lived in plenty or comfort. 

 My belief, on the contrary, is that their existence must always have 

 been hard, and in bad seasons their lot one of great misery. Still 

 they did live, and in considerable numbers, in places where the popu- 

 lation is sometimes scant enough to-day. 



Now, owing to many causes (among which may be numbered our 

 system of primogeniture, the working of the Enclosures Acts, the 

 introduction of Free Trade, which has made agriculture in England 

 wlien practised on a small, and indeed on a large scale, a somewhat 

 doubtful and unprofitable business), they have for the most part 

 vanished. Nor has the land and the industry of its cultivation 

 prospered of late years. According to an estimate arrived at by the 

 Eoyal Commission on Agriculture, the value of that land in the 

 United Kingdom decreased between the years 1875 and 1895 by some 

 834,000,000?., or 50 per cent., although since then it may again have 

 risen a little. Further, I think that it produces to-day something less 

 than half the wheat that it produced in 1850, whilst, though the grass 



