SMALL INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 149 



fabrication of fruit preserves, and so on, and how all sorts 

 of associations for sale and export are easily introduced. 

 Mans is, as known, a great centre for the export of 

 geese and all sorts of poultry to England. 



Part of Normandy (namely, the departments of Eure 

 and Orne) is dotted with small workshops where all 

 sorts of small brass goods and hardware are still fabri- 

 cated in the villages. Of course, the domestic fabrication 

 of pins is nearly gone, and as for needles, polishing 

 only, in a very primitive form, has been maintained 

 in the ' villages. But all sorts of small hardware, 

 including nails, lockets, etc., in great variety, are fabri- 

 cated in the villages, especially round Laigle. Stays are 

 also sewn in small workshops in many villages, notwith- 

 standing the competition of prison work* 



Tinchebrai (to the west of Flers) is a real centre for 

 a great variety of smaller goods in iron, mother-of-pearl 

 and horn. All sorts of hardware and locks are fabri- 

 cated by the peasants during the time they can spare 

 from agriculture, and real works of art, some of which 

 were much admired at the exhibition of 1889, are pro- 

 duced by these humble peasant sculptors in horn, 

 mother-of-pearl and iron. Farther south, the polishing 

 of marble goods is carried on in numbers of small work- 

 shops scattered round Solesmes and grouped round one 

 central establishment where marble pieces are roughly 

 shaped with the aid of steam, to be finished in the small 

 village workshops. At Sable* the workers in that branch, 

 who all own their houses and gardens, enjoy a real well- 

 being especially noticed by our traveller, t 



In the woody regions of the Perche and the Maine 

 we find all sorts of wooden industries which evidently 

 could only be maintained owing to the communal pos- 

 session of the woods. Near the forest of Perseigne there 



* I gave, a few years ago, some information about French prison work 

 in a book, In Russian and French Prisons, London, 1888. 

 f Ardouin Dumazet, vol. ii., p. 51. 



