100 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



French possessions united to England when William the 

 Conqueror crossed the Channel and overthrew the Saxon 

 dynasty, they have remained through all these years 

 unshaken in their fidelity to the representatives of their 

 hereditary sovereigns. Race, language, contiguity of terri- 

 tory, would seem to have allied them to Norman France ; 

 yet so slight was the bond that held them, that shortly after 

 the separation we find this added petition in their litany : 

 " From the fury of the Norman, good Lord deliver us." 

 Undoubtedly in bygone ages, before subsidence had taken 

 place, these islands formed a part of the continent, and were 

 actually joined to France ; but now they stand like sentinels, 

 lone outposts, surrounded by rushing tides and raging seas, 

 which in their ceaseless action have eaten out and swept 

 away the softer and more friable rocks, leaving only a " fret- 

 work of those harder barriers that still resist attack, and are 

 enabled to present a bold and serried front against their 

 relentless enemy," 



The Channel Islands are six in number, namely, Jersey, 

 Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Jethou and Herm, and lie one 

 hundred miles south of England and fifteen from the shores 

 of France, being well within a line drawn parallel to the 

 coast, from the end of the peninsula on which Cherbourg is 

 built. The two largest of these — Jersey and Guernsey — 

 arc the ones with which we shall concern ourselves to-night. 

 Small in area, mere dots on the surface of the glolie, they 

 yet have won for themselves a name and place in the agri- 

 culture of every civilized nation of the world. The first, 

 some eleven miles in length by five and a half in l)readth, 

 covers an area of 28,717 acres; the second, nine and a half 

 miles in length by six and a half in breadth, contains about 

 li),705 acres. Of these areas scarce two-thirds is land that 

 can l)e cultivated, for we must bear in mind that the forma- 

 tion is mostly granite, rising in clifts from two hundred to 

 four hundred feet, with deej) indentations and wide encir- 

 cling bays where the sea has eaten into the shore. From 

 the elevated crest to the water's edge is a " wide margin of 

 descent, upon which fertile soil cannot accunmlate, and a 

 poor and scanty pasturage, its only possible produce, is gen- 

 erally more or less overpowered by brake, gorse and heath." 



