young boys of fourteen years getting 10s. for barrow work, — 

 they not only live better, and arc visibly better clothed on 

 Sundays, but they are able to save. Further, some of the more 

 intelligent labourers have become good mechanics, and have got 

 to having the charge of steam-engines and other machinery ; 

 while the genius of the men generally has been much stimulated 

 by endeavouring from time to time to discover the best and most 

 advantageous methods of digging out the nodules, washing them, 

 and carrying on other operations. 



The unfavourable result of these diggings is that drinking 

 has increased. The men work very regularly their own time, 

 and have their allotted beer— two or three pints a day — whilst 

 engaged in it, wliich is not nruch more perhaps than the labour 

 requires. But leaving work every day at four in the afternoon, 

 and on Saturdays always at twelve at noon, they have much 

 time at their disposal, inducing idle habits, and tempting them 

 to sit long at public houses on their way home. 



The diggings have also, to a certain degree, operated 

 unfavourably for ordinar}- farm work. The labour-market is 

 considerably affected in some places, though the scarcity of men, 

 at first much felt, has been partly corrected by immigTation, 

 families coming from the woodland parts of the county to settle 

 where the hands are most Avanted. Formerly the price of labour 

 was regulated by the price of wheat : now, in the neighbourhood 

 in which my informant lives, he tells me. for the last six or eight 

 years, it has been affected simply by the supply and demand for 

 labour, a principle before unknown in that part of the country. 

 All the able-bodied go " a fossiling " as it is called ; and they 

 scarcely ever go back to their former employments. The farmers, 

 consequently, are obliged not only to pay a higher rate of wage 

 than formerly, but to put up, in many instances, with the old 

 and very young, the latter Ijcing taken away from school at a. 

 proportionately early age, and thereby receiving detriment to 

 their education. Boys of fourteen years get to consider 



