46 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



To-day there are fourteen railways that lay 

 their glittering steel roads at the gates of this 

 garden of Paradise, and during the whole 

 summer months two markets are held daily 

 in the town. 



So rapid has been the conversion of farm 

 land into market gardens that out of the rural 

 area of 10,000 acres, 7000 are taken up as 

 small holdings of under 50 acres each. 

 Indeed, so far afield has the extension of 

 small holdings gone that the County Council 

 has been obliged to knock at the gilded gates 

 of the Duke of Orleans at Wood Norton, 

 demanding admission to his farm land for 

 English tillers of the soil. 



It was only at the Enquiry, held by the 

 Commissioner of the Board of Agriculture last 

 autumn as to the desirability of enforcing a 

 compulsory order against the Duke, that one 

 heard any sympathy in this district for the 

 preservation of the pheasant in place of the 

 preservation of the English peasant, and that 

 was voiced by the Commissioner I In two 

 parishes in the Evesham district, namely at 

 Badsey with its 1161 acres, and at Aldington 

 with its 644 acres, every yard of ground is 

 taken up in holdings of less than 50 acres. 



