88 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



no less than 10,720 horned cattle, 3800 sheep, 1815 

 horses and 6550 swine, to grow flax, and to export 

 various agricultural produce.* 



Another illustration of this sort may be taken from 

 the Channel Islands, whose inhabitants have happily 

 not known the blessings of Roman law and landlord- 

 ism, as they still live under the common law of Nor- 

 mandy. The small island of Jersey, eight miles long 

 and less than six miles wide, still remains a land of open- 

 field culture ; but, although it comprises only 28,707 

 acres, rocks included, it nourishes a population of about 

 two inhabitants to each acre, or 1300 inhabitants to the 

 square mile, and there is not one writer on agriculture 

 who, after having paid a visit to this island, does not 

 praise the well-being of the Jersey peasants and the 

 admirable results which they obtain in their small farms 

 of from five to twenty acres, very often less than five 

 acres by means of a rational and intensive culture. 



Most of my readers will probably be astonished to 

 learn that the soil of Jersey, which consists of decom- 

 posed granite, with no organic matter in it, is not at all 

 of astonishing fertility, and that its climate, though 

 more sunny than the climate of these isles, offers many 

 drawbacks on account of the small amount of sun-heat 

 during the summer and of the cold winds in spring. 

 But so it is in reality, and at the beginning of this 

 century the inhabitants of Jersey lived chiefly on im- 

 ported food. (See Appendix J.) The successes 

 accomplished lately in Jersey are entirely due to the 

 amount of labour which a dense population is putting 

 in the land ; to a system of land-tenure, land -transfer- 

 ence and inheritance very different from those which 

 prevail elsewhere ; to freedom from State taxation ; and 

 to the fact that communal institutions have been main- 

 tained down to quite a recent period, while a number 



* O. de Kerchove de Denterghen, La petite Culture den Flandres beiges 

 Gand, 1878. 



