POOR MOORLAND HOLDINGS. 129 



tillage. Pot-making finds work for some of 

 those who do not live entirely out of the 

 produce of their land. Some of these pots, 

 perfumed in some mysterious way as though 

 the scent of the pine and the heather had 

 commingled with the clay, find their way to 

 Recent Street. One man with five acres 

 devoted a good deal of his time to hawking 

 about these pots in the surrounding villages. 

 The clay is under their feet, and the potter's 

 wheel is not an expensive plant to set up. 

 In the district of Ringwood gloves are made, 

 — the shop supplying the wool, and women 

 and children earn money at this trade in the 

 winter evenings. 



One man I visited turned the heather to 

 account by making besoms, thus giving him- 

 self a winter occupation. He has, however, to 

 go farther afield than Verwood for his heather, 

 for here the cows of the small holders crop 

 too closely. Four shillings a cwt. is what he 

 has to pay to another lord of the manor for 

 cutting it, but he can buy the wood for his 

 handles cheaply, and he sells his besoms to 

 traders at Is. l)d. a dozen. He had the quick 

 dark eye of the gipsy, and the gipsy's lithe, 

 sinewy body, and I saw more than one physical 



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