OF AGRICULTURE 93 



The most striking fact is, however, that in 

 some undoubtedly fertile parts of the country 

 things are even in a worse condition. My heart 

 simply ached when I saw the state in which 

 land is kept in South Devon, and when I learned 

 to know what " permanent pasture " means. 

 Field after field is covered with nothing but 

 grass, three inches high, and thistles in profusion. 

 Twenty, thirty such fields can be seen at one 

 glance from the top of every hill ; and thousands 

 of acres are in that state, notwithstanding that 

 the grandfathers of the present generation have 

 devoted a formidable amount of labour to the 

 clearing of that land from the stones, to fencing 

 it, roughly draining it and the like. In every 

 direction I could see abandoned cottages and 

 orchards going to ruin. A whole population has 

 disappeared, and even its last vestiges must 

 disappear if things continue to go on as they 

 have gone. And this takes place in a part 

 of the country endowed with a most fertile 

 soil and possessed of a climate which is 

 certainly more congenial than the climate of 

 Jersey in spring and early summer a land 

 upon which even the poorest cottagers occa- 

 sionally raise potatoes as early as the first 

 half of May. But how can that land be culti- 

 vated when there is nobody to cultivate it ? 

 " We have fields ; men go by, but never go 



