28 ESSEX PAST AND PRESENT 



remainder of the year. Here, therefore, they were 

 at a disadvantage as compared with the dairy farmers 

 of Cheshire, Staffordshire, or Derbyshire. Then the 

 land itself had been ' starved ' by the previous tenants, 

 who, when times of depression came upon them, sacri- 

 ficed their bullocks, their cows, their sheep, and their 

 horses, and clung on to wheat-growing, so that not only 

 did they abandon that which might have paid, for the 

 sake of that which did not pay, but they deprived the 

 land of all home-made manure. Early in the days of 

 the new movement, however, and at a time when the 

 virtues of artificial manures were not so widely known 

 as is the case now, one of the shrewdest of the 

 Scottish settlers resorted to the use of basic slag, 

 and this he did with results that were regarded with 

 astonishment. His landlord had, for instance, 'thrown 

 in ' a piece of derelict land that seemed to have been so 

 exhausted as not to be worth any rent at all. A 

 judicious application of basic slag brought it into good 

 condition again, and a succession of excellent crops 

 followed. 



True it is that in respect to their general farming the 

 Scottish settlers had various things to learn. Certain 

 methods which suited Ayrshire did not suit Essex, and 

 it was especially found that some of the agricultural 

 implements which had helped to fill up the aforesaid 

 special trains had better have been left behind in Scot- 

 land. But in this period of transition, when the settlers 

 were adapting Scottish farming principles to Essex 

 local requirements, they always had their dairy business 

 to fall back on, and it was to this they looked as the 

 main source of their revenue. 



Here, however, fresh difficulties arose. The dairy 

 farmer was found to be in a hopeless position, especially 

 in his dealings with London middlemen, so long as he re- 



