INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 299 



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 work- 

 shops where all sorts of small brass goods and 

 hardware are fabricated 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 fabricated in the villages, especially round 

 Laigle. Stays are also sewn in small workshops 

 in many villages, notwithstanding the com- 

 petition 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 fabricated 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 produced 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 workshops, scattered 

 round Solesmes and grouped round one central 



* I gave some information about French prison work in a 

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



