178 JUNE. 



many parts of England, where coal is scarce, what 

 would the poor do without peat or turf? No one 

 knows the value of a sod, or a gorse-bush, who has 

 not traversed the wastes of Cornwall, where timber 

 and coal seem equally unknown, and the little stack 

 of turf and one of gorse by the side of every hut, 

 carefully thatched and secured with a perfect net- 

 work of rush-cords, often with bricks and stones 

 slung across them by similar bands to prevent the 

 blustering sea-winds blowing them away, tell you 

 of the high value of that which in other counties is 

 rooted out as a nuisance. I have crossed high heaths 

 where the inhabitants have picked the bones of 

 mother earth to bareness ; paring the scanty turf 

 off, year after year, for fuel, till nothing remains but 

 the naked stone. There you find the fireplace shut 

 up with little iron doors, to prevent the too great 

 consumption of fuel. The poor seldom indulge in 

 a fire except to cook their meals, or keep it in from 

 one meal-time to another by the merest handful of 

 turf ; and at a country inn they cook your steak, or 

 boil the kettle for your tea, by lighting a piece of 

 dried gorse, and blow it all the time with the bel- 

 lows into an active blaze. In such places the cut- 

 ting, gathering, and stacking of peat or turf is a 

 great assistance to the poor ; and I have seen women 

 employed by the roadside, stacking up what ap- 

 peared to me merely dirt, earning at this solitary 

 work about eight pence a day. In the garden, the 

 chief occupations consist of weeding, watering, and 

 destroying insects. 



