232 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



As to the fertility of the soil, it is still worse advocacy, 

 because there is no area in the United Kingdom of equal 

 size which would be manured to such an extent as the area 

 of Jersey and Guernsey is by means of artificial manure. 

 In the seventeenth century, as may be seen from the first 

 edition of Falle's Jersey, published in 1694, the island " did 

 not produce that quantity as is necessary for the use of the 

 inhabitants, who must be supplied from England in time 

 of peace, or from Dantzic in Poland ". In The Groans of 

 the Inhabitants of Jersey, published in London in 1709, we 

 find the same complaint. And Quayle, who wrote in 1812 

 and quoted the two works just mentioned, in his turn com- 

 plained in these terms : " The quantity at this day raised 

 is quite inadequate to their sustenance, apart from the 

 garrison " (General View of the Agriculture and the Present 

 State of the Islands on the Coast of Normandy, London, 1815, 

 p. 77). And he added: "After making all allowance, the 1 

 truth must be told ; the grain crops are here foul, in some 

 instances execrably so ". And when we consult the modern 

 writers, Ansted, Latham and Nicolle, we learn that the soil 

 is by no means rich. It is decomposed granite, and easily 

 cultivable, but "it contains no organic matter besides what 

 man has put into it ". 



This is certainly the opinion any one will come to if he 

 only visits thoroughly the island and looks attentively to its 

 soil to say nothing of the Quenvais where, in Quayle's time, 

 there was " an Arabian desert " of sands and hillocks cover- 

 ing about seventy acres (p. 24), with a little better but still 

 very poor soil in the north and west of it. The fertility of 

 the soil has entirely been made, first, by the vraic (sea-weeds), 

 upon which the inhabitants have maintained communal 

 rights; later on, by considerable shipments of manure, in 

 addition to the manure of the very considerable living stock 

 which is kept in the island; and finally, by an admirably 

 good cultivation of the soil. 



Much more than sunshine and good soil, it was the condi- 

 tions of land-tenure, and the low taxation which contributed 

 to the remarkable development of agriculture in Jersey. 

 First of all, the people of the Isles know but little of the 



