THE WEST COUNTRY GENERALLY. 191 



and their tributaries, and consists of a very fertile and 

 rich tract of country, containing abundant pasture and 

 corn land. The divisions of these by parting hedges 

 escape the monotony of a chess-board arrangement by 

 the varying sizes of the enclosed fields ; but are typical 

 of much of England's agricultural land, and strangers 

 to it have the opportunity of seeing what it is like when 

 they travel by the great railway lines that run from 

 London to Exeter and Penzance. To such travellers 

 the familiar town names of Salisbury on the South 

 Western and Swindon and Chippenham on the Great 

 Western will indicate points which will illustrate the 

 general features of the country. Farms of varying size 

 are numerous, and abundantly produce butter, cheese 

 and milk, barley, green crops, potatoes and wheat. 

 Numerous cattle graze on its pastures, and the race of 

 pigs easily take front rank by virtue of being the providers 

 of the far-famed Wiltshire bacon. The middle and 

 south lands of Wiltshire have the honour of including 

 the historic Salisbury Plain, and the chalky downs of 

 which that famous region consists roll on to meet the 

 northern boundaries of Dorset and Hampshire. Here 

 also, upon levels and over leafy uplands, sheep-farming 

 extensively prevails, and interspersed with the pastures 

 provided for them are cornfields of large area ; but the 

 soil generally owes its richness to cultivation. 



The region that has been briefly and rapidly surveyed, 

 comprising the principal agricultural counties of the 

 South and West of England, is second to none in this 

 Kingdom ; and yet in the past it has bred a race of 

 peasants notorious as being the worst paid and the worst 

 housed, and the most generally wretched of all the classes 

 engaged in the cultivation of the soil in Great Britain 

 and Ireland and the islands of our seas. 



