COLONISING CROWN LANDS. 85 



new and bountiful crops, but through its 

 fecund contact with Mother Earth a new race 

 of country children. 



Fecundity is regarded here as a parochial 

 and national asset, just as it is in our distant 

 colonies ; indeed it is encouraged in a way that 

 would have shocked poor Malthus and given 

 much joy to the great stout heart of Cobbett. 



At Moulton, near by, a young married man 

 was pointed out to me as one who had applied 

 to the Parish Council for one of the houses 

 erected by the Crown on the five-acre Parish 

 Council holdings. He was a very suitable 

 tenant, but there was one thing against him — 

 he was not married. However, on his giving 

 the Council his assurance that he would find a 

 wife within a given time — which he did long 

 before the time expired — he was granted a 

 holding. 



One small holder of forty-six acres at Wing- 

 land had a family of no less than ten daughters, 

 and a very charming picture they made, woman- 

 like, cleaning up the rubbish on the strawberry 

 field, while the father ploughed between the 

 rows. Any one who knew this desolate, home- 

 less district before 1907 coming suddenly upon 

 an animated scene like this, must have felt as 



